Thirty - Jill Emerson [18]
After dinner we went not to a movie but to bed, and not to his bed but to mine. There was a long line in front of the movie, so we gave each other meaningful looks and I said something about my apartment not being very far away. He bought some wine and we went back and talked a little and necked a little and went to bed.
The necking part was really great. It brought it all back. Being young and dating and just feeling each other and groping toward sex instead of getting undressed and putting on a diaphragm and getting in bed together and mechanically gliding into the old husband-and-wife number.
When we wound up in bed it was like two happy kids playing with sex, very loose and sweet and nice. We sort of moved from position to position, and it was loose and lazy, no urgency. I think the wine probably had something to do with it. He was able to go what seemed an incredible length of time without coming and without losing his erection. We took turns being on top, he took me from the rear, we sat facing each other, and the whole thing was purely physical, pure bedroom gymnastics, with no complication of how did we feel about each other or where is our relationship going or any of that oppressive crap.
I hadn’t thought, on the basis of the other night, that he was that good a lover. I think maybe there’s a certain amount of getting used to each other that people have to do before they can really groove on each other’s bodies.
I could have come a couple of times before I finally did, but I waited, and we got there together. Strangely enough after all of that it was not overpowering, not designed to knock me unconscious or anything like that, but very enjoyable and clean feeling and happy making all the same.
Revelation: Sometimes one (i.e., me) does not want to have a big orgasm because it is too much of a surrender of self. Of ego. The little part of you inside your head does not want to let go all the way. Question: Is that why women are frigid? That same kind of holding back?
I am learning things about myself and the world. Maybe they are things everyone else already knows—I sometimes get that feeling, that I am in fact some sort of retarded child. But I am changing. I feel myself changing. Every day I find myself somehow no longer the child I was yesterday.
Scary.
But Arnold and his weirdness. Afterward we were lying on the bed together. I have naturally told him things about myself, not hiding anything in particular, merely being a little reticent about details. Now he begins to ask sex questions.
“Can I ask you something, Jan? Ever make it with a girl?”
“No.”
“Honestly? Not even once?”
“Of course not. I’m probably a lot of things, but not a lesbian. Why?”
“I wondered.”
“I impress you as a lesbian? I’m not sure that’s a compliment, love.”
“Oh, as a matter of fact, you’re wrong.”
“Really?”
“Mmm-hmmm. Most really sensual women have had a homosexual experience somewhere along the line. High school or college. A drunken thing with a roommate or a crush on a teacher or some sort of thing.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Your observation or Kinsey’s?”
“I suppose mine, but I don’t think it’s original with me, or that it strikes a blow at established theories. Everybody’s supposed to be basically bisexual, you know.”
“I’m sure I never felt anything that way.”
“Maybe not. Ever have any experience with group sex?”
“You mean wife swapping? Suburban sin clubs? I suppose some of that does go on—”
“You better believe it does.”
“But I never had firsthand evidence of it. In our crowd there was some occasional groping at parties and there may have been some affairs on the sly, but no Westport Roulette.”
“Is that what they’re calling it now?”
“Isn’t it? You know, with the keys in the hat?”
“I guess so.”
“Is that what you meant?”
“Not exactly. I meant, you know, more than two people in the bed.”