Threesome - Lawrence Block [10]
Let us not probe motives too closely. Too much attention to vy anyvun does anyzing gives rise to nausea and despair, usually in that order.
I don’t remember just when Priss told me about the thing she and Rhoda had going in college. I remember the conversation well enough but not its location in time. We were going through a mutual confession trip, one of those here’s-some-of-the-crazy-things-I-did-before-I-met-you-things. Not to purge ourselves, but because that sort of thing turns one on.
A perhaps uncomfortable truth—once the fresh gloss is gone from a marriage, once two people cease to be so madly new to one another, the marriage inevitably gets refreshed from the outside. If it gets refreshed at all. Not that people necessarily cheat, or enlarge their family circle in some such manner. But that each, at least in mind, starts filling that bed with other people. You turn on with forbidden thoughts and work them out on each other’s bodies. When a marriage relationship goes stale, all that means is that there has been a failure of imagination.
“Say, I was wondering. Did you ever make it with a girl?”
“What made you ask that?”
“Ah, hah! I think you just answered it, lotus blossom.”
“Oh, did I?”
“You can talk about it.”
“But you’ll despise me, won’t you? ‘Damned blonde dyke bitch.’ You’ll hate me.”
“Oh, come on. Do I know the girl?”
“Girl? How do you know there weren’t dozens?”
“There was just one. Am I right?”
“As a matter of fact, you are.”
“Rhoda Whatchamacallit. Muir.”
“You just flashed into that one? Or did you find some old letters of mine, and is this an elaborate Talmudic con game?”
“No, I psyched it. Tell me.”
“What is there to tell? We, oh, you could say we experimented with sex. The way kids experiment with drugs?”
“They do like hell ex-fucking-periment with drugs. They blow grass and drop acid because it gets them high. That’s not an experiment. It’s a pleasure.”
“Well, it was a pleasure, all right.”
“What happened?”
“What do you think? We made love.”
“I mean what did you do?”
“Locked the door first. Played records. Sometimes left the lights on and sometimes turned them out. Do we really have to have this conversation?”
“No, liebchen, not if it’s too painful for you to talk about it.”
“Devious sheenie bastard.”
“Devious, yes. Sheenie, yes. Bastard, no. What did you used to do in bed?”
“Oh, this is so silly, Harry. We didn’t do anything that you and I haven’t done like maybe a thousand times.”
“Was it better with her?”
“Now you’re not going to be jealous of something that happened in college, for Christ’s sake.”
“It’s not jealousy, it’s fascination.”
“Why?”
“Because I think lesbians are great.”
“I’m not a lesbian!”
“Don’t shout, I’m right here in front of you. I think it’s adorable, two girls in bed together. I’m serious, goddammit, I’m not being sarcastic, nor am I putting you on. I think it’s sweet.”
“Sweet?”
“Yes.”
“I guess it was sweet.”
“It’s a whole fantasy of mine, as a matter of fact. A whole fetish thing.”
“Honestly?”
“Absolutely.”
“I never knew that. Why didn’t you ever say anything? I could start wearing neckties to bed and pitching my voice lower and cursing like a state trooper. What’s so funny?”
“Like a trooper.”
“So?”
“Not like a state trooper. Oh, you’re a delight. No, it doesn’t matter, forget it. Hey, let’s go upstairs.”
“You’re not kidding.”
“Put your hand here and you’ll see if I’m kidding.”
“Well, what do you know about that? It’s got a great big cock on
it.”
“Christ!”
So it turned me on, the whole idea of the two of them together turned me on. So who knows why?
Because I’m some kind of a latent faggot? Better latent than ever, I suppose, but if I ever had the desire I never knew it. The closest I ever