It was only a short time after we were installed in the Palace of Time and the River that I discovered one morning, while taking a shower, that the head of my cock was ringed with bleeding sores. It gave me quite a fright, needless to say. Immediately I thought that I had contracted the “syph.” And since I had been faithful in my way I could only suppose that Mona had given it to me.
However, it isn’t in my nature to run to the doctor at once. With us the doctor has always been looked upon as a mountebank if not a downright criminal. We usually wait for the surgeon, who of course is in league with the undertaker. We always pay handsomely for the perpetual care of the grave.
“It will go away of itself,” I told myself, taking my prick out twenty or thirty times a day.
It could have been a backfire from one of those menstrual pea-soup fucks too. Often, in fatuous masculine pride, one mistakes the tomato-juice flow of the period for a precoital flow. Many a proud dick is sunk in this Scapa Flow. . . .
The simplest thing, of course, was to question Mona, which I promptly proceeded to do.
“Now listen,” I said, still in good humor, “if you’ve got a dose you’d better tell me. I’m not going to ask you how you came by it. . . I want the truth, that’s all.”
The directness of this made her burst out laughing. She laughed a little too heartily, I thought.
“You could get a dose from sitting on the toilet,” I said.
This made her laugh even more heartily—almost hysterically.
“Or it could be a throwback from an old dose. I don’t care when or where it happened . . . have you got it, that’s what I want to know.”
The answer was No. Emphatically No! She was sobering up now and with the change came a little show of anger. How could I think up such an accusation? What did I take her for—a trollop?
“Well, if that’s the case,” said I, putting a good face on it, “there’s no need to worry. You don’t get a clap out of thin air. I’ll forget about it. . . .”
But then it wasn’t so easy to forget—just like that. In the first place the fucking was taboo. A week had passed, and a week is a long time when you’re used to fucking every night and in between a piece now and then—on the wing, as it were.
Every night it stood up like a pole. I even went to the absurd length of using a condom—just once—because it hurt like hell. The only other thing to do was to play stink-finger or suck her off. I was a little leery about the latter, despite her prophylactic protestations.
Masturbation was the best substitute. In fact, it opened up a new area of exploration. Psychologically, I mean. Lying there, with my arm around her and my fingers up her crotch, she became strangely confidential. It was as though the erogenous zone of her mind were being tickled by my fingers. The juice began to spill out . . . “the dirt,” as she had once called it.
Interesting how women dish up the truth! Often they begin with a lie, a harmless little lie, which is just a feeler. Just to see how the wind blows, don’t you know. Should they sense that you’re not too hurt, not too offended, they risk a morsel of truth, a few crumbs cleverly wrapped in a tissue of lies.
That wild automobile ride, for instance, which she’s rehearsing under her breath. One wasn’t to think for one moment that she enjoyed going out with three strange men—and two dopey fluffs from the dance hall. She had only consented because at the last minute there was no other girl to be found. And then, of course, she may have been hoping, though she didn’t know it at the time, that one of the men might be human, might listen to her story and help her out—with a fifty-dollar bill perhaps. (She always had her mother to fall back on: mother, the prime cause and motivator of all crime. . . .)
And then, as always happens on automobile rides, they began to get fresh. If the other girls hadn’t been along it might have turned out differently; they had their dresses up over their knees before the car had hardly started. They had to drink too—that was the worst of it. Of course she only pretended to drink . . . swallowed just a few drops . . . enough to wet her whistle . . . the others gulped it down. She didn’t mind so much kissing the men either—that was nothing—but the way they grabbed her right away . . . pulling her teats out and running their hands up her legs . . . the two of them at once. They must have been Italians, she thought. Lecherous brutes.
Then she confessed to something which I knew was a goddamned lie, but it was interesting just the same. One of those “deformations” or “displacements,” as in dreams. Yes, you see, oddly enough the other two girls felt sorry for her . . . sorry that they had got her into such a pickle. They knew she wasn’t in the habit of sleeping with every Tom, Dick and Harry. So they stopped the car and changed seats, letting her sit up front with the hairy guy who had seemed decent and quiet thus far. They sat on the men’s laps in the back, their dresses raised, facing forward, and while smoking their cigarettes and laughing and drinking, they let the men in the rear have their fill of pleasure.
“And what did the other guy do while this was going on?” I finally felt impelled to ask.
“He didn’t do anything,” she said. “I let him hold my hand and I talked to him as fast as I could so as to keep his mind off it.”
“Come on,” I said, “don’t tell me that. Now what did he do—out with it!”
Well, anyway, he did hold her hand for a long time, believe it or not. Besides, what could he do—wasn’t he driving the car?
“You mean to say he never thought of stopping the car?”
Of course he did. He tried several times, but she talked him out of it. . . . That was the line. She was thinking desperately how to get round to the truth.
“And after a while?” I said, just to ease her over the rough spots.
“Well, all of a sudden he dropped my hand . . .” She paused.
“Go on!”
“And then he grabbed it again and placed it in his lap. His fly was open and it was standing up . . . and twitching. It was a tremendous thing. I got terribly frightened. But he wouldn’t let me take my hand away. I had to jerk him off. Then he stopped the car and tried to push me out. I begged him not to throw me out. ‘Drive on slowly,’ I said, ‘I’ll do it . . . later. I’m frightened.’ He wiped himself with a handkerchief and started going again. Then he began talking the vilest filth . . .”
“Like what? Just what did he say, do you remember?”
“Oh, I don’t want to talk about it . . . it was disgusting.”
“Since you’ve told me this much I don’t see why you hesitate over words,” I said. “What’s the difference . . . you might as well. . .”
“All right, if you want it. . . . ‘You’re just the kind I like to fuck,’ he said. ‘I’ve been meaning to fuck you for a long time. I like the turn of your ass. I like your teats. You’re no virgin—what the hell are you so delicate about? You’ve been fucked all over the lot—you’re cunt right up to the eyes—and things like that.”
“You’re making me horny,” I said. “Go on, tell me everything.”
I could see now that she was only too delighted to get it off her chest. We didn’t have to pretend anything any more—we were both enjoying it.
The men in the rear seat wanted to swap, it seems. That really frightened her. “The only thing I could do was to pretend that I wanted to be fucked by the other one first. He wanted to stop at once and get out. ‘Drive slowly,’ I coaxed, ‘I’ll give it to you afterwards . . . I don’t want them all on me at once.’ I grabbed his prick and began to massage it. It was stiff in a minute . . . even bigger than before. Jesus, I tell you, Val, I never felt a tool like that before. He must have been an animal. He made me grab his balls too—they were heavy and swollen. I jerked it fast, hoping to make him come quick . . .”
“Listen,” I interrupted, getting excited by the tale of the big horse cock, “let’s talk straight. You must have wanted a fuck bad, with that thing in your hand . . .”
“Wait,” she said, her eyes glittering. She was as wet as a goo
se now from the massaging I was giving her all the while . . .
“Don’t make me come now,” she begged, “or I won’t be able to finish the story. Jesus, I never thought you’d want to hear all this.” She closed her legs on my hand, so as not to get too excited. “Listen, kiss me . . .”—and she ran her tongue down my throat. “Oh God, I wish we could fuck now. This is torture. You’ve got to get that tended to soon . . . I’ll go crazy . . .”
“Don’t get off the track. . . . Now what next? What did he do?”
“He grabbed me by the neck and forced my head down into his lap. ‘I’m going to drive slow like you said,’ he mumbled, ‘and I want you to suck that off. After that I’ll be ready to give you a fuck, a good one.’ It was so enormous I thought I’d choke. I felt like biting it. Honest, Val, I never saw anything like it. He made me do everything. ‘You know what I want,’ he said. ‘Use your tongue. You’ve had a prick in your mouth before.’ Finally he began to move up and down, to slide it in and out. All the time he held me by the neck. I was nearly crazy. Then he came—ugh! it was filthy! I thought he’d never stop coming. I pulled my head away quickly and he shot a stream of it into my face—like a bull.”
By this time I was on the verge of coming myself. My prick was dancing like a wet candle. “Clap or no clap. I’m going to fuck tonight,” thought I to myself.
She went on with the story after a lull. How he made her huddle in the corner of the car with her legs up and poked around inside of her while driving with one hand, the car zigzagging back and forth across the road. How he made her open her cunt with her two hands and then turned the flashlight on it. How he put his cigarette inside her and made her try to inhale with her cunt. How one of them tried to stand up and shove his prick in her mouth, but too drunk to do anything. And the girls—by this time stark naked and singing filthy songs. Not knowing where he was driving or what was coming next. “No,” she said, “I was too scared to be passionate. They were capable of anything. They were thugs. All I could think of was how to escape. I was terrified. And all he kept saying was: ‘You wait, you lovely bitch . . . I’ll fuck the ass off you. How old are you? You wait . . .’ And then he’d grab himself and swing it like a club. ‘When you get this inside your cute little twat you’re going to feel something. I’ll make you come out of your mouth. How many times do you think I can do it? Guess!’ I had to answer him. ‘Twice . . . three times?’ ‘I guess you ain’t ever had a real fuck. Feel it!’ and he made me hold it again while he jerked back and forth. It was slimy and slippery . . . he must have been coming all the time. ’How does it feel, sister? I can put another inch or two on that when I ram it up that hole of yours. By the way, how would you like it up the other end? Listen, when I get through with you, you won’t be able to say fuck for a month.’ That’s the way he talked . . .”
“For Christ’s sake, don’t stop there,” I said. “What’s next?”
Well, he stopped the car, beside a field. No more shillyshallying. The girls in the back were trying to put on their clothes, but the men shoved them out without a stitch on. They were screaming. One of them got a clout in the jaw for her pains and fell like a log beside the road. The other one started to clasp her hands, as if she were praying, but she couldn’t make a sound, so paralyzed with fright she was.
“I waited for him to open the door on his side,” said Mona. “Then I jumped out quickly and started running across the field. My shoes came off, my feet were cut by the thick stubble. I ran like mad and him after me. He caught up with me and pulled the dress off me—tore it with one yank. Then I saw him raise his hand and the next moment I saw stars. There were needles in my back and needles in the sky. He was on top of me and going at it like an animal. It hurt terribly. I wanted to scream but I knew he would only strike me again. I lay there stiff with fright and let him maul me. He bit me all over—my lips and ears, my neck, my shoulders, my breasts—and never once did he stop moving—just fucking away like some crazed animal. I thought everything had broken inside me. When he pulled away I thought he had finished. I began to cry. ‘Stop that,’ he said, ‘or I’ll kick you in the jaw.’ My back felt as though I had been rolling in glass. He lay down flat on his back and told me to suck him off. It was still big and slimy. I think he must have had a perpetual erection. I had to obey. ‘Use your tongue,’ he said. ‘Lick it up!’ He lay there breathing heavily, his eyes rolling, his mouth wide open. Then he pulled me on top of him, bouncing me up and down like a feather, turning and twisting me as if I were made of rubber. ‘That’s better, eh?’ he said. ‘You work now, you bitch!’ and he held me lightly by the waist with his two hands while I fucked with all my might. I swear Val, I didn’t have a bit of feeling left—except a burning pain as though a red-hot sword had been thrust inside me. ‘That’s enough of that,’ he said. ‘Now get down on all fours—and lift your ass up high.’ Then he did everything . . . taking it out of one place and putting it in the other. He had my head buried in the ground, right in the dirt, and he made me hold his balls with my two hands. ‘Squeeze them,’ he said, ‘but not too hard or I’ll lay you cold!’ The dirt was getting in my eyes . . . it stung horribly. Suddenly I felt him push with all his might. . . he was coming again . . . it was hot and thick. I couldn’t stand it another moment. I sank down flat on my face and I felt the stuff pour over my back. I heard him say ’God damn you!’ and then he must have struck me again because I don’t remember anything until I woke up shivering with cold and found myself covered with cuts and bruises. The ground was wet and I was alone . . .”
At this point the story went into another groove. And then another and another. In my eagerness to keep up with her flights I almost overlooked the point of the story, which was that she had contracted a disease. She didn’t realize at first what it was, because it had announced itself in the beginning as a bad case of hemorrhoids. Lying on the wet ground had done that, she averred. At least that had been the doctor’s opinion. Then came the other thing—but she had gone to the doctor in time and he had cured her.
To me, interesting as this might have been, considering that I was still concerned about the ringworms, another fact had emerged which transcended it in importance. Somehow I hadn’t paid such close attention to the details of the aftermath—how she had picked herself up, begged a ride to New York, borrowed some clothes from Florrie, and so on. I remember having interrupted her to ask how long ago it was that the rape had occurred and my impression is that her answer was rather vague. But suddenly, while trying to put two and two together, I realized that she was talking about Carruthers, about living at his place and cooking for him and so on. How had that happened?
“But I just told you,” she said. “I went to his place because I didn’t dare go home looking as I did. He was terribly kind. He treated me as if I were his own daughter. It was his doctor I went to—he took me there himself.”
I supposed from this that living with Carruthers meant that she had been living with him at the place where she had once given me the rendezvous, where Carruthers had walked in on us unexpectedly and where he had made a jealous scene. But I was mistaken.
“It was long before that,” she said. “He was living uptown then,” and she mentioned the name of some famous American humorist with whom Carruthers then shared a flat.
“Why you were almost a child then—unless you’re lying about your age.”
“I was seventeen. I had run away from home during the war. I went to New Jersey and took a job in a munitions plant. I only stayed a few months. Carruthers made me leave the job and go back to college.”
“So you did finish your studies?” I said, a bit confused by all the contradictions.
“Of course I did! I wish you’d stop insin——”
“And you met Carruthers in the munitions plant?”
“Not in the plant. He was working in a dye factory nearby. He used to take me into New York now and then. He was the vice-president, I think. Anyway, he could do as he pleased. He used to take me to the
theater and to night clubs. . . . He liked to dance.”
“And you weren’t living with him then?”
“No, that was later. Even uptown, after the rape, I didn’t live with him. I did the cooking and the housework to show him that I was grateful for all he had done. He never asked me to be his mistress. He wanted to marry me . . . but he didn’t have the heart to leave his wife. She was an invalid . . .”
“You mean sexually?”
“I told you all about her. What difference does it make?”
“I’m all balled up,” I said.
“But I’m telling you the truth. You asked me to tell you everything. Now you don’t believe me.”
At this moment the horrible suspicion flashed through my mind that the “rape” (and perhaps it hadn’t been a rape!) had occurred in a past all too recent. Perhaps the “Italian” with the insatiable prick had been nothing more than an amorous lumberman in the North woods. No doubt there had been more than one “rape” pulled off on these midnight automobile rides which hot-blooded young girls indulge in after hitting up the flask. The image of her standing alone and naked in a wet field at dawn, her body covered with cuts and bruises, the uterine wall broken down, the rectum mutilated, her shoes gone, her eyes black and blue . . . well, that was the sort of thing a romantic young lady might cook up to cover a careless lapse that ends with gonorrhea and hemorrhoids, though the hemorrhoids did seem a bit gratuit.
“I think we’d better go to the doctor tomorrow, the both of us, and have a blood test taken,” I said quietly.
“Of course I’ll go with you,” she replied.
We embraced one another quietly and then we slid into a long fuck.
A disquieting thought now asserted itself. I had a hunch that she would find an excuse for postponing the visit to the doctor a few days. In that time, if it were a disease that I had, I could have communicated it to her. I dismissed the thought as absurd. A doctor could probably tell by examination whether she had given it to me or I to her. And how could I have caught a dose, except through her?