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Chapter 2
As I was crossing
campus today, I noticed Nicole talking to some women. Actually,
it was her hair that caught my eye first. Long, dark in color,
but light in weight, like the woman herself. It's autumn,
but still balmy and girls were back to wearing warm-weather
togs: cropped tops, maybe sleeveless, and wispy skirts. That's
the way Nicole's friends were dressed, and they were stunning.
Smart, grad-student faces and brutally sexy, lightly clad
bodies. Nicole herself was wearing a short yellow dress and
heeled sandals. Her toe-nails were painted. Her legs were
smooth and long-looking, though she's actually not tall. There
was a breeze blowing, and she was facing into it, so her dress
clung to her like shrink-wrap. Nothing - not tight jeans or
short-shorts or even a bikini - nothing displays a woman's
total form like a summer dress caught in the wind. In particular,
you get the best revelation of her mound, in a way that brings
out intimate details while respecting the place of the grassy
knoll in the over-all plan of her body. The thinner the woman,
the finer the depth-of-field, so the more information passes
through the fabric. So there was the cool and very thin Nicole,
laughing with her friends while an obliging breeze invited
me to study the flatness of her abdomen, including even the
indentation of her navel, her blade-like hips, her slender
upper thighs and, most awe-inspiring, the clean, round bump
between them. I stood near enough to concentrate - I even
caught a whiff of perfume when the wind spun round - but far
enough to go unnoticed. When the breeze blew right, I could
make out, at Nicole's hips and groin, the outline of very
brief panties, and I could even detect a thin layer of gossamer
over her marble mound, the cushion of pubic hair that floated
over it without disguising its hardness - all this layered
detail thanks to the subtle probing of the cosmic ether. I
felt grateful, as well as guilty (a little), to be given all
this food for thought.
-=o=-
I learned a couple
of things about the TA this afternoon from an older student.
Everyone higher up on the social scale than us kids in the
class is allowed to call her Nickie. She's Nickie, in other
words. She thinks of herself as Nickie. A nice, friendly name
for a girl, sort of unisex, showing that she sees herself
as a rugged sort of person, but not aloof. Also (I learned),
she's Jewish. Like a lot of people at the University, but
like very few people back home. I guess a more worldly person
would have known instantly. Her name is Jewish, and so are
her looks, if you think about it. In my home-town the only
Jewish people were the family that owned the "department store,"
the Bergdorfs. It was actually called Bergdorf's Department
Store, but the famous Bergdorf's in New York had no reason
to feel threatened. We all called the place "Bird-dog's" anyhow.
There were maybe five "departments": pajamas, clock-radios,
"notions" (as distinct from full-fledged thoughts, I guess),
rubbers (for the feet), and Lorus watches. That's the impression
you got, anyhow. The Bergdorf's grand-daughters were in high
school with me. They looked a little like Nickie Altman, now
that I think of it: same dark hair with a frizz, same complexion
like a gentle sun-tan, same expression in the eyes and mouth,
a constant look, I realize, of impending cleverness, of mischief
reluctantly tabled. Yes, Nickie does get this expression on
her beautiful face very often, as if she's trying to keep
herself from doing or saying something irresistibly naughty.
The Bergdorf girls weren't lacking in beauty either, but it
was hard to get a take on it and just enjoy it, and now I
see why: all that private laughter just under the surface.
I feel very good
about being in love with a Jewish girl. It goes somehow with
wanting to be a philosopher when I grow up. Once I consider
it, I realize that I found this look very sexy even back home,
but many things, including my lack of an ability to think,
prevented me from recognizing this. Yes, the Bergdorf girls
were very sexy: they had nice, breasty bodies, and they dressed
well too, which is to say, not in clothes that came from their
grand-parents' department store. But the things my friends
said about them - I mean about "Jewesses" in general...that
was the word they used, always in a whisper - these things
were what my freshman-comp professor would call "daunting,"
meaning scary in a way you don't have to be ashamed of. Maybe
we could be teased for being awkward and unmanly around regular
girls, but nobody could blame a guy for being afraid of the...hush..."Jewesses."
Because these "Jewesses" were almost a different species,
though there wasn't one-hundred-percent agreement as to what
made them different. In fact, there was total, chaotic disagreement.
Even the guys
who claimed to have gone ahead and made out with one of the
Bergdorf girls gave conflicting reports of their anatomical
details. They had bigger thises and bigger thats between their
legs, and more hair and less hair, or it could be no hair,
and maybe no that but a this, or vice versa. We weren't of
one mind about what any of this revealed about them anyhow.
Our experience of thises and thats was quite incomplete. Similar
doctrines were revealed concerning the females of all races,
up to and including "the Italian race." Chinese girls were
supposed to have horizontal slits, but none of us could claim
to know for sure since the owners of The Lucky Wok only had
sons, kids our own age who'd just say something in Chinese
to one another when we asked, then laugh their heads off.
The view was frequently expressed (suddenly I'm seeing Professor
Smart with his salt-and-pepper hair recounting the heady disputes
of the sages concerning the cunts of..."Jewesses"! "Yes, ladies
and gentlemen, some thinkers have put forward the thesis bla-bla-bla,
while others have staunchly maintained bla-bla-bla in the
face of the ridicule of their contemporaries, though history
has, as history will with a regularity most discomfiting for
the complacent among us, borne the dissenters out....")...anyhow,
the view was frequently expressed that the women of each race
had their own kind of smell, and the reason you stuck to your
own race for sex was that the other races' woman-smells -
not only Jewish girls now, but black girls, Asian girls, Dravidian,
Arabian, you name it - would have such a paralyzing effect
on you, you'd never be a man again once they got to you. They
were like some devastating drug, these smells, intended to
turn able-bodied males like us into pussy-whipped ("or pussy-whiffed?"
I used to say, because deep down I thought this all had to
be trash), feeble-minded slaves.
What does all
this race-junk have to do with learning to think? Nothing
at all. That's my point. I'm a late bloomer. Not that I ever
really believed any of this garbage - not deep down - but
our brains were chockablock with it. It was our language.
It didn't say much, but it was the only language we knew,
so we went on speaking it. But it wasn't thinking because
it was based on what Plato calls "opinion," comparing it to
lumpy shadows on the wall of a cave. Not knowledge, in other
words, just the dumb-bunny opinions of boy-virgins. You see,
I haven't actually seen a live woman fully naked, and my friends
back home haven't either.
Most of my visual
knowledge comes from magazines. The closest I've come to seeing
the real thing (and if that's not real, that particular thing,
then I'm with those philosophers who say that nothing is)
is when I was thirteen and Kenny Manning got his eleven-year
old sister Chrissy to strip down to her panties for a bunch
of us. She did it all step by step, starting with her t-shirt,
and just the idea that it was happening was thrilling. Just
to see a girl, even if she WAS only eleven, in her bra - that
was incredibly arousing, to me and to the other boys as well.
There were maybe six of us, plus Chrissy and her brother,
and we were all standing, we boys in a sort of semi-circle,
and the girl somewhat apart, facing us. It wasn't that she
was being forced exactly: Kenny had talked her into it with
some sort of bribe, and promised her she wouldn't have to
take off her panties. But she was confused about what attitude
to take. I think the effect she was having actually shocked
little Chrissy and made her feel kind of mighty for a few
minutes. She pointed at a couple of our hard-ons and said,
"You've all got bulges." And one of the guys, voicing the
general embarrassment, said, "That's our business, little
girl," and Chrissy said, "I was just saying," and tossed her
head in a grown-up way, and another guy said, "You sort of
got them too under that bra." Then Kenny told his sister to
take her bra off, and she got shy again and lowered her eyes
but did what she was told. Later I'd imagine the whole thing
all over again, but this time with all the boys having to
strip naked first, so we'd be standing there with our erections
sticking out even before the girl pulled off her shirt. And
Chrissy would laugh at us and say, "You guys are so pathetic.
All I have to do is show up. God!" I guess I felt I shouldn't
have been there, shouldn't be part of this, that it was a
truly piggish thing to do. But I so desperately yearned to
see a flesh-and-blood female body I couldn't keep away. But
in my fantasy-version, when she showed contempt for us and
our penises, I felt it was what we deserved and that we were
the ones actually being humiliated. I even imagined apologizing
to her and kneeling and promising to obey her every whim.
Combined with the indelible picture in my mind of semi-naked
Chrissy, this extra element kept my imagination fired for
many an evening. But I forced myself to drop the kneeling
bit because I didn't think it was healthy for a boy to fantasize
about being a little girl's slave, and the other boys talked
about the Chrissy thing as though it had been our finest hour.
When Chrissy undid
her bra, you could practically hear our hearts banging in
our chests. HER chest was showing the first swellings of breasts,
and we just stood and gawked. It wasn't that they were that
much, but they were something we didn't have, something that
said, This is a girl, you're looking at the bare chest of
an actual girl, a genuine pre-woman - and it can only get
bigger. Chrissy was getting there. In a way it was thinking
about what it meant, and not just staring at Chrissy's pubescent
bosom, that made the thing exciting. (You see, I haven't forgotten
the point of this journal-keeping after all.) You could see
some curvature below her waist, and protruding hip-bones above
the low top of her jeans. She was only eleven, but when she
unbuttoned her pants and let them drop, she might as well
have been Julia Roberts, her effect on us was so devastating.
She was wearing simple cotton panties that she was already
outgrowing, so they clung to her pussy-parts and gave us an
excellent outline-view of her lips. I was surprised at how
prominent they were puffing against her panties, with her
groove like a deep valley in between. She definitely didn't
look like a boy down there. But that's as far as it went.
Kenny stopped the action there. We begged to see it all. There's
so little left to strip. Those panties..., they're like nothing.
But Kenny said, "She's my sister, guys," and that was the
end of it. Except that I still see Chrissy that close to naked
in my dreams. I scold myself, but I'm excited all the same,
and when I imagine it's little Chrissy who scolds me, and
mocks me for being so fascinated by her, I end up even more
excited.
A few times in
high-school I got far enough with a girl to be allowed to
massage her through her panties, and in that way I learned
of her wetness and her smell. Exactly once I slipped my hand
under a girl's panties, combed her pubic hair and fingered
her vagina for a few seconds, taking in everything about it
I could as to its texture and temperature before the girl
brought my exploration to an indignant halt. I acquired much
sensory knowledge very quickly that time, but not through
the most important cognitive portal (Professor Smart's expression,
and very catchy), the eyes, since the room was totally dark.
That's why I can speak with some familiarity about certain
female qualities, and still maintain that I have never actually
seen a live naked woman. I have at best gathered certain tactile
and olfactory perceptions, but these I have cherished.
However, when
I think about lessening the cognitive and epistemological
gap between the TA and me (as generally I do first thing in
the morning - my attention lured to the subject by that early
riser, my penis - and at least three or four more times by
evening) I implicitly alter the facts of my life which are
suggestive of inexperience and corollary self-doubt. I see
myself approaching Ms. Nicole Altman with confidence and savoir-faire
bordering on the cocky. I don't stand on ceremony. I undress
her, I lay her down. She's reluctant at first, very ambivalent.
Maybe she's just slightly afraid of me, small woman that she
is. She has the body of an adolescent, lean and bony. Her
breasts are small, but firm and high. Her hips curve, but
it's her sharp, protruding bones doing it - like an adolescent.
I stroke her armpits, checking for smoothness, though I expect
to find it. I have this idea that teasing her shaved parts
is a good way of reminding a girl that you know what she's
hiding in the place she doesn't shave. I take a few licks
of her nipples, which I imagine timid and dark and buttery
smooth, then bury my fingers in her wiry triangle and make
her wet despite herself. Her scent fills the air and I might
call her attention to it, embarrassing and disarming her a
little. Then I slip myself inside her, as if it's what she
and I were made for, and she gives in to me, admitting that
she likes it, squealing a lot, egging me on, then feeling
a little humiliated afterwards because she'd been forced to
drop her pose of authority by one very exciting freshman.
-=o=-
It's been seven
days since I wrote the above. As a description of my imaginary
doings with my beloved philosophy TA, it was pretty accurate
for its age, the fairly primitive, barbaric era of my life
that for the time being I'll call last week. But when I read
it now, I'm struck by how quickly such things start to look
old-fashioned and naive. The other morning, "just like that,"
I would have said before learning that everything has an explanation,
even if we don't know what it is yet...the other morning,
everything changed. I was lingering in bed, having outslept
my clock, trying to calculate the odds of my big and ready
morning penis letting me get out of bed without paying him
the regulation respects. But he's so insistent. He's been
up for hours, probably, tanking himself on dark-roast testosterone,
getting pretty jumpy waiting for me and my mental picture-collection
of Nicole Altman to rescue him from frenzy. I suddenly have
this vision: all over the building, in every male suite, something
like this is happening, this morning and every morning. Hundreds
of boys with wake-up hard-ons badgering them like obnoxious
room-mates to do the right thing before getting out of bed.
Hundreds of brains swimming with images of girls - very likely
girls from nearby suites who are right now showering, already
back from a brisk morning jog, or already padding from the
shower, wrapped in towel sarongs and turbans, or actually
brushing and drying and making themselves captivating so that
the thought of them will keep us boys prisoners of our beds
again tomorrow morning, hard-hearted warden Penis, who works
for the girls and doesn't like US one bit, never even admitting
there's such a thing as Good Time. To think that men all over
the world start their days like this and then have the...the
balls?...to strut about as though they belonged to themselves.
Yes. You see,
this line of thought was my first clue that something had
changed. This idea that seemed to be waiting for me like my
erection to wake up and notice it. It felt new and yet, in
a way, familiar. I suppose those fantasies of abject apology
to Chrissy were a preview of it. But it felt even deeper-rooted
than that. I just couldn't place it. In any case, as my perfect
Platonic idea of Nicole Altman (which Plato would say is "more
real," being an idea, than the flesh-and-blood woman I would
adore in class this morning, but I have to say not quite)...as
the never-real-enough Nicole Altman drifted into focus, I
felt this weakness before her. I don't mean simply the usual
soft spot, but this strange, deep humility. I wasn't at all
sure of myself. I imagined myself as I'd truly be: awkward
and trembling. I tried for the usual preliminaries - the unzipping
of Nicole's skirt, the lowering of her panties, my first sight
of her mound and pubic hair, the womanly scent emanating from
her girlish body - but I saw myself very shy through all this.
And then, as though I'd suddenly found the right path after
stumbling around in the woods, I heard the womanly voice directing
me to my knees. Yes, instead of daring to enter Nicole, I
went obediently down on her, my tongue responding to her precise
instructions. I imagined her implacable, but praising me in
the end for my devotion and even my skill. Even making a condescending
joke: if I were half as good at linguistic analysis as I am
at cunnilingus, well.... I didn't imagine myself coming and
I didn't come. My penis didn't know what to think, but finally
agreed to it. What I thought was: Let me go through the day
with this humble desire to please dominating my mind. Let
me bring it to Nickie Altman's classroom. Let my eyes convey
it to her and...why not?...to other girls too. Maybe they'll
know what to do with it. Why do I say "maybe"? Girls know.
They don't even have to think about it.
end
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