v
Charlie called me a few days later from Providence. “I’m going down to D.C. this weekend for the Mobe. You want to come with me? This war has to end, we have to raise the stakes, make it impossible for Johnson to keep sending troops there.”
“How does that work, Charlie? How does a march, even if it’s thousands of people, make a difference?”
“It’s not any one thing, Janie. It’s a single drum beating, that gets joined by another and another and another, until they get so loud those people have to listen.”
“I’m so overwhelmed at college. I feel like Alice through the looking glass – I have to run twice as fast simply to stay in the same place. So much reading, so much writing, everyone’s so smart, knows more than me, has more insight than I do.”
“Sure, I get it, you’ve got to study. I know how hard that is. I went to Brown, remember? There is something you can do for me, for us, then. Arlene wants to go too, so we’d have to take Denise, but it’s no place for a kid, so she’s going to stay home with Denise. Want to come down here for the weekend and baby-sit? Then the two of us could go together. We’d be back early Sunday. You could take the train down here. She still naps every day, sleeps ten, eleven hours at night. You can do lots of studying with her, and on the train. Whaddya say?”
I did want to see Denise, see what she’d be doing, how she’d be talking now. And I hadn’t left Cambridge, had hardly left the campus at all, except for that one day with Mike. Impulsively, I blurted out, “Sure. Pick me up at the station Friday around dinner, I guess?”
Denise kept me busy all Saturday. I read one page in my psych text, but otherwise I catered to her whims, trying to keep her from running out into the street, or getting caught half-way up the jungle gym at the playground. Even so, I felt relieved to be free of Harvard stress, to be reminded that real life wasn’t always an intense discussion of endless new ideas. A little kid grounds you real fast, I decided.
Charlie and Arlene came back around noon. I drove Denise down to the station to meet them. The idea was to take that same train on into Boston, while they drove back home. We had ten minutes to talk.
As soon as Denise saw Arlene, she ran to her and jumped in her arms. Hauling her little girl up, up, kissing her all over, then resting her on one hip, Arlene asked “Was she any trouble? Did she eat like she’s supposed to? What about a nap?” Not waiting for an answer, she turned away and walked over to the car, leaving me with Charlie.
He looked a bit bedraggled, baggy eyes, wrinkled shirt and twisted pants. He must have slept on the train. Still full of energy, though, he excitedly described the day. After a few speeches at the monument – “None as dramatic or inspiring as Martin Luther King” – 50,000 people walked across the river to the Pentagon. There, things seemed to get a little wild.
“There were a lot of cops, thousands of them. Army, too. MPs, Marshalls. It was chaos. There was one guy, he had a bunch of flowers, going along sticking them in the barrels of the Army guns. Another group of guys, I think one of them was Abbie Hoffman, acted like a bunch of hippies, saying crazy things, trying to get people naked. At one point, they chanted and waved their arms up and down. Said they were going to levitate the Pentagon, bring the whole war machine tumbling down. People broke through the fences set up all around. Sometimes, the MPs would grab them, by the hair or the collar, hit them with nightsticks. People kept saying the time for protest is over, it’s time for resistance. Hundreds – hundreds, Janie – of people got hauled off, got arrested. There was blood all over the steps. I don’t know where it’s all going to end, I don’t know how they can keep fighting when so many of us are against it.”
“That sounds scary, Charlie. Are you OK?”
“Arlene was with me. I’m not going to let the mother of our child get in any trouble. We stayed out of all that, didn’t even burned by any tear gas.” He almost laughed, but turned serious. “Dow Chemical is coming to Harvard this week. I heard at the march there’s going to be protests. Same thing at every campus when they show up, recruiting science majors for the war machine.”
“Why Dow Chemical? What’s so bad about them?
“Napalm. You’ve heard of napalm, haven’t you”
I knew the word, but nothing about what it was, or why it might be bad. I shook my head.
“Napalm. It’s like liquid fire. They shower it down from airplanes, to burn the jungle, so they can see the Viet Cong hiding there. Only problem, once it leaves the plane, you can’t control where it goes. It burns people, Janie, burns women, kids. It’s evil, it’s wrong, and Dow makes it. We need to starve them of new talent coming in from good schools, Harvard, places like that.”
The next Tuesday, hundreds of people gathered in the Yard, to protest the war. The SDS, the Students for a Democratic Society, called for an action the next day against Dow Chemical recruiters. Wednesday morning, after my morning class, I found a mass of students with a sprinkling of faculty between Mallinckrodt Hall and the Conant chemistry building. The SDS leaders soon realized the recruiter in Conant had no interviews scheduled, that the real action was over in Mallinckrodt, so they urged the crowd to block that building. The Dean of the College came out with the real recruiter, hoping to sneak him away from the protesters. Once he saw the crowd, they darted back inside. Dean Glimp then spent most of the next seven hours attempting to negotiate his “release”. Scores of students gave their Bursar’s cards in a thick packet to him, calling his bluff when he said he would sever their relationship with Harvard if they didn’t disperse and allow the recruiter to leave. It was a heated confrontation, but without any of the violence Charlie had described in Washington. Even so, I felt things could erupt at any moment. My legs were wobbly, my mind raced, as I walked back home to Cabot, grabbed a few more books, and headed to Hilles for some pre-dinner studying.
That evening, I was still jittery from the scene in the yard. Jeanne and Marcia were both engrossed in writing papers due that week, so I chanced a call to Mike. He now shared a top-floor suite with two sophomores. He occupied half the living room, while the others each had a single room intended as a double. They even had their own telephone, so Mike answered right away.
Looking for some relief from the tension permeating campus, I asked, “Mike, can we go to New York next weekend?”
“Uh, I’ve got this Organic Chemistry test on Monday, and I’m not doing so well there. I haven’t figured it out yet. I got a C minus on the first test last week.”
“I really need to get away. They had an anti-war rally here today, and I’m feeling so tense. I want to see a play, walk around in Central Park.”
“How would that work, anyway?”
“I could take the train down to Meriden Saturday morning, you meet me there, then we go into the City, find a student rush matinee, it doesn’t matter which one, anything with tickets. I’ll look in the New Yorker, see what’s happening. OK? Please?”
He was quiet for several seconds, thinking. “Right. I can study tonight, tomorrow, Friday. What time does that train get in?”
Of course, I’d already figured this out. “The schedule says if I take the first one, I’m in Meriden at 9:12, we get to New York by 11:45.”
vi
Only The Birthday Party, by Harold Pinter, had open rush tickets. I didn’t tell Mike, but the New Yorker critic had panned it. It involved a lot of word play, scary confrontations, with an occasional blackout during the worst of the spats. Mike thought much of it was funny, and sported a jolly mood as we left the Booth theatre into a chilly drizzle. We found a small deli near Central Park, glad to spend more time out of the rain.
Still a little energized from his first Broadway play, Mike enthused, “That was fun. I like it when you almost can’t figure out what they’re talking about.”
“He’s English, you know. British.”
“Who?”
“Pinter, the writer. All those actors are American, but the play opened in London ten years ago. Maybe that’s why it seemed a little odd.”
“Mmm…” was all he said. Then, “I didn’t tell you yet, but my father wants to take us out to Sun Valley this Christmas, to see Shelly. He wants to learn how to ski, he says. He’s a real jock, you know.”
“A jock?”
“Yeah, he was a triple letterman at the Naval Academy. He’s always learning some new sport. First, golf, when he got to Cincinnati. He’s got a little trophy from a tournament he won. Then he started ice skating, pulled my sister and I into it, remember? And he built that pool in the backyard, so he could swim half the year. Put in a basketball hoop, coached a Knothole team, and all that.”
“Knothole?”
“It’s baseball for kids. I played when I, what, was 8, 10, 11 ?”
“Were you any good?”
“Well, not so much when I started out in the third grade, But then I got glasses, and I could actually see the ball, so I could get some hits. I got spiked once, playing second base, when somebody slid into me. Wanna see?” he enthused, starting to pull up his left pant leg.
“No! No, not here.”
“Oh” he rubbed his left shin, as if remembering. “It was weird. I had a big gash in my skin half way down my leg, but it didn’t hurt at all. My father took me to the doctor after the game ‘cause there was this thing hanging out, and he thought I might need stitches. We got there, the doctor took a quick look, said, “Oh, that’s just a little piece of fat. Don’t worry, this won’t hurt a bit.’ He grabbed a pair of scissors, and cut it right off. He was right, I didn’t feel anything. I guess there’s no nerves in fat? He only put on a little band-aid. You sure you don’t want to see the scar?”
I scruchned up my nose, and wondered how he could find all that so fascinating, playing baseball, his father’s sport, getting injured. I worked on my corned beef sandwich and thought, that’s one of the things intriguing, attractive, about him, that’s he’s so at home in his body. He has a hidden grace when he moves, doesn’t have to worry that he might accidentally knock over a glass of water when he’s reaching for his hot pastrami sandwich. That and his little boy eagerness, in such contrast to his poems and his late-night thoughts when we talked about who we were and wanted to be, made him hard to resist.
Outside, the rain had stopped. Cars, buses, taxis, people, the whole panoply of New York Street life assaulted us as we left the deli. Soon we found ourselves outside the Plaza Hotel, looking across to the park.
“You need to – we need to – go in the park and walk, show you what’s here,” I insisted.
“This is Central Park? It’s so big. And hilly. I thought it was all flat, Manhattan.”
Darting across 59th street, we skirted the pond and soon arrived at the bridge spanning its northern end. Fall colors were in full, defiant beauty, as if holding back the coming winter. A riot of flaming red ivy covered the stonework arch. Iridescent orange, sun-like yellow, and fading green flanked the upward curving piers on each side. Above, grey clouds lightened to white, a smattering of blue fighting to push through. Birds were everywhere, flying, flitting, alighting on the branches above, knocking leaves free to float like swinging hammocks to the water below.
“It’s so much…quieter in here, “ Mike marveled.
“Come on. I want to show you something.”
“What? Where?”
We passed the zoo, where animals paced in the wrought-iron cages, looking out-of-place and desolate. To our left, Wollman Rink appeared to be opening for winter skating. A Zamboni turned tight circles. leaving a freezing sheen of wetness behind. Families with ear muffs and scarves laced up, waiting to slip and slide. Children’s cries pierced the quiet, anticipating excitements to come. I turned to Mike, saying, “Wait, OK? You’ll like it. It’s up near the Met.”
Soon, we turned off the road, heading east past the statue of Hans Christian Anderson sitting by an oval lake. Tiny sailboats, remotely controlled from the far edge of the pond, motored along its surface. Off to one side, the Mad Hatter smiled at a mouse, sitting on its haunches atop a bronze toadstool, while the White Rabbit checked his watch. Alice, Dinah in her lap, stretched her hands out towards the edges of her own, much larger mushroom, as if deciding which side to eat.
“Yeah, wow, I love Alice in Wonderland.” Mike exalted. “In seventh grade, we read that, and then had to write a story based on it. I made up an encounter she had with a unihorn, that’s a unicorn who could play music through its horn! And before, when I was three or four, I told my mother I wanted to be Alice for Halloween.”
“How’d that go?”
“I remember getting a lot of candy that year, and wearing a blue skirt with a white blouse.”
“It doesn’t seem to have affected you too much. I mean, you don’t still want to be a girl. Or is there something you’re not telling me?”
He took the question seriously. “Humm…I guess not. The next year, kindergarten, I had a crush on a girl in class, then every year at Woodland Park, it was another girl, until Kathy – you remember Kathy?”
Kathy. The girl with the curly black hair. Miss Cincinnati. A little gruffly, I said, “Sure, she got you into South Pacific, right?”
“You never forget anything, do you?”
“Yeah, it’s a curse. But it did come in handy on the SATs, and It’s Academic.”
We kept walking towards the Met. Mike continued, “I feel sometimes like there are two of you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there’s one part of you that’s all serious and adult. No-nonsense, intense. The other side, you love little kids, love to laugh and have silly fun. Maybe even love me?”
“I don’t think that’s so surprising. We all – or at least you and me, and the friends we have – we’re not so far from when we were little, and it’s not that long until we have a family of our own, more kids. But to get from one to the other, we have to, for want of a better word, grow up. We have to find a life, create it from a vague dream, build it, and that takes work, serious work.”
“I know, I know, but I don’t want to change. That’s like Alice, she was always changing, and she got very confused. I want to always be having fun, to play at life, not have life play with me. Even when I’m older, I don’t see myself losing that, becoming too serious about anything. I never want to forget the little kid who made me what I am today…” He trailed off wistfully.
We’d come to the Met, it’s stolid granite walls rising menacingly above us. “You’re sounding like Holden Caulfield, now that you’ve come to Manhattan.” I looked at my watch. “Think we should get back to Grand Central? It’s almost 5.”
“How do we do that?”
“We go out here, take the subway. Should only take 15 minutes.” I didn’t want to lose the thoughts I was getting, so I went on. “I’m not as sure of who I am as you seem to be. I get all mixed up with what’s expected of me, and what I feel inside about myself. And that’s all wrapped up with being a girl, I think. At Avondale, and now at Harvard, I’ve always felt a little on the outside looking in.”
“You?” He sounded incredulous. “You were the queen of your class. And you got into the best college in the country!”
“Sure, but being at Radcliffe, as smart as we all are supposed to be, we’re second-class citizens. Harvard was there first, it’s their professors and classes. We’re still fighting to be considered an equal part of it. They all think it’s a finishing school for very ambitious women.” I wanted to say, “You’ll never get what it’s like being a woman, no matter how hard you try, Michael Harrison,” but I held back. I felt a pull inside fighting to rule me, a need to have, to possess, and be possessed by him.
We made it back to Meriden by nine, got to his room in Clark Hall by 9:30. No one was home. Stuck to the temporary wall, a maroon burlap curtain actually, which cordoned off Mike’s space from the living room, a note from his roommate read, “Larry and I are off to Fairfield this weekend. Back for dinner Sunday night.”
vii
We must have forgotten, that day, about me going back to Cambridge. The topic never came up, not on the way to New York, not in the deli, or walking through the Park, or on the train ride back. I had a round trip ticket, Boston-to-Grand Central. I was a bit surprised to find myself getting off with him in Meriden. I thought, “We’ll have a kiss good-bye, then I’ll get back on.”
He held on so tight, so long, though, it seemed natural, as conductors whistled stragglers into the cars and lifted the stairs inside, finally pushing the doors closed, for me to simply stay with him. I had no plan, just a slight inability to say good-bye.
Pulling the note off the door, Mike mused, “I guess Rich and Larry aren’t coming back tonight. He said something about going away this weekend.”
“You know why?”
“Larry’s such a wonk. He wants to be a lawyer, a judge someday. He studies even more than you do. Finally he got restless, asked Rich to take him somewhere. I thought they were going down to a mixer at Conn. College, would get back late tonight.”
I looked around his suite. He had divided the large common area in half with a few two-by-fours hauled in from the nearby hockey rink construction site. Burlap curtains, nailed to the superstructure, covered most of this make-shift wall, leaving a flapping fabric door in the middle. A shelf resembling a little bar.perched half-way up. No liquor was in evidence though, only a green bulbous Chianti bottle holding a half-melted candle covered with waxy drippings. His bed, originally the bottom of a bunk set, sat underneath two windows in his jerry-rigged bedroom. Out in the truncated living room was the top bunk, covered with a thin-ribbed faded red cotton blanket and a long vinyl back pillow.
I plopped down on this make-shift couch and perused the contents of the bookshelf to my right. Without thinking, I pulled out The Abnormal Personality by Robert White, opened it up and said as I randomly flipped through the pages, “White. You know, he’s a famous guy in Cambridge. Everybody talks about him in the psych department.” I noticed Mike’s meticulous green highlighting, on nearly every page though Chapter 4, “The Integration of Personality.” One part had been furiously underlined and starred. I read aloud, “Hey! Listen to this. ‘There is a certain restricted portion of the total range of intelligence which is most favorable to the development of a successful and well-rounded personality, somewhere between 125 and 155 I.Q.’ What did you say your mother tested you at?”
“138, I think.”
I went on, “He says, ‘Adolescents in this range are enough brighter than average to win the confidence of others, bringing about leadership, and a superior efficiency in managing their own lives. And, there are enough of them to afford mutual esteem and understanding.’ Reminds me of being at Avondale, and now in Cambridge. I feel at home here, not estranged.”
Mike reflected, “OK, but there is more to you, to us, than being smart. You know how to have fun, you can smile about your life. I think that’s why…that’s why I like being with you so much.”
I put the book back on the shelf. Time to deal with the elephant in the room, I decided. “I’m staying here tonight, right? Can I use the bathroom down the hall?”
Only a little flustered, Mike hesitated briefly, eyes darting back and forth, then said, “Uh…OK. I’ll stand outside, make sure it’s safe.”
Back in the living room, seated on the couch with Mike, we fell together. One kiss, then two, and I leaned back, gently pulling him down next to me. The pillow left little room for both of us. Mike sat up, tugging at my arm, and guided me through the burlap curtain to the bed beneath the windows. I was thinking about the “mutual esteem and understanding” phrase in White’s textbook. I knew we loved each other, we said as much all the time. I knew that meant more than respect for each other’s minds, dreams, hopes, and ideals. I knew it also led to this, towards getting into bed together at night. We both lay down, fully clothed.
“This is stupid,” I observed. I took off my blouse and skirt, slipped down my hose, and tugged at his pants. He finally got the idea, and pulled those off. We both worked on his pullover, getting it caught on his glasses, which he laid on the window ledge. Now what, I wondered, as we pulled the sheets over us. I certainly had no idea, and was pretty sure he didn’t either. Tentatively, I laid my hand on his stomach, rubbing up and down across his belly-button. He felt so soft, so warm, I had to let him know.
“I like the way you feel, your stomach, here.”
“Why?”
Are you kidding, I thought. Now is not the time for analysis. It’s time to explore, to find and feed the feelings we each were hiding. “Shush,” I whispered. “Lie here with me, OK? Let’s just touch each other a while.” With that, he turned on his side to face me, started kissing my lips and cheeks, neck and shoulders. He stroked my head, my hair, and rested there, lost in those locks he professed to love so much. Then his hands roamed across my back, down my arms, feeling my hips, questioning, wondering as he went. I started to lose myself, began to open up to him, trying to meld my mind with his. I closed my eyes and saw a glistening, glowing tunnel, easy to enter, easier to slide down and through. One last gate stood in our way.
He stayed silent, still questioning with his arms around me. They slowly relaxed as he sighed and gently rolled me away from him. He fumbled briefly with my bra clasps, until I helped release them, slinging the straps across my shoulders. He pulled me closer, my back caressing his chest, my legs cupped and curved against his.
Two fingers tracing down from my ribs past my hips, he whispered, “I like the way you’re soft and round here.”
Flippantly, I came back with, “We’re built like that so we can bear our young.”
Sounding puzzled, he said, “What, you mean, like rest a baby on your hip?”
I thought of a baby growing inside, enough room for a seven pound kid. I wondered why I’d said that. “No. We have to carry babies, inside, we’re made for that…” This was so weird. I hoped he wasn’t taking it the wrong way. “Women, I mean. Not me. No way I’m ready for that.”
“Yeah. That’s scary.” He reached around, found one breast, and cupped it in his hand. Quietly, he asked, “Does that feel good?,”
It did, I couldn’t deny it, not to myself or him. “Mmm hmm,” I murmured, slowly snuggling my body closer to him.
“You’re just the right size, we fit together perfectly.”
We fell asleep like that, huddled peacefully against the late October chill.
viii
Tuesday night, Jeanne showed up at dinner in a shimmery black cape, tall conical hat, wand, and black mask. “Where’s your costume? Aren’t you going to the Yard, protect the little kids knocking on doors?”
I was not a fan of Halloween. “I have a hard enough time being me, much less dressing up as someone else. I’ll go and keep you company, OK?” I looked at Jeanne in her witch’s outfit, and Marcia, dressed as a cheerleader, letter sweater on top, short pleated skirt over tights below. She jiggled pompoms in my face. “Where’d you get that?” I asked.
“Didn’t I tell you? Junior year, I was actually a cheerleader. Of course, with no football team, it was more of an honorary position, I guess.” She threw one arm up, the other down, stuck one hip out, and, pirouetting around, danced out the door.
Outside, Jeanne asked, “So you went to New York on Saturday. But you didn’t come home until Sunday afternoon. Um, what did you guys do? Where did you stay?”
Marcia added, “Jeanne and I decided, while you were gone, we need to make a pact together. About boys. And sex.”
“Everything but…” Jeanne explained.
“Everything but?” I wondered.
Marcia went on. “In high school, boys were always looking at me, taking me out, expecting me to … do things. The school was Catholic, and some of the girls, we vowed, ‘Never”, we’re not going to let our lives get messed up because some boy wants to, how do I say it, “experiment” on us. But we didn’t want to be seen as prudes, so we drew up some ground rules, and all swore to each other. I’m starting to feel the need for that again.” She paused as we came to Mass. Ave, the traffic halting us as we crossed over to Harvard. “The TA in my child development class, Esther, she’s married. I asked her about it, about how she handled it when she was in school. She’s really cool, she said she’d show us some things.”
That Friday, we went to Esther’s apartment. She’d convinced her husband Nathan to have a boys’ night out. Esther was short, wiry, almost hyperkinetic. Large black glasses framed her face under short black hair, giving her an owlish appearance. She turned to the television, switching off Walter Cronkite in mid-sentence while khakied GIs slogged through a swamp, rifles held high over their heads.
“Men…” she whispered, more to herself than us. Louder, she went on. “You all want to be shrinks, right? What was it Socrates said, ‘Know thyself’? You may think he means, your mind, who you are.” Esther was about 5 years older than us, married, graduated the previous year from Brandeis. She exuded worldly self assurance. “When I was your age, high school and starting college, I didn’t know much. About myself. About my body, what it wanted, what it could do. I found out a lot, by making a lot of mistakes, stupid things. No reason you should have to make the same ones. Let’s see what we can learn together.”
That night, we talked about what we’d done, or really hadn’t done, with boys. What we’d learned, or really hadn’t learned in high school health class. We shared our knowledge, or really our lack of it. Esther let us talk, looking around our little group, eyebrows raised, a human talking stick keeping the conversation moving.
Jeanne: “At school, in class, it all sounded so mechanical, so anatomical. “Penis’, ‘Vagina’, “Spermatozoa’, ‘Ovaries, tubes’.”
Me: “I know. Never anything about what to do with physical feelings, just vague talk about love and responsibility.”
Marcia: “And why did we have to be separate, boys and girls? Wouldn’t it be better to talk about this with them, rather than talk about them?”
Me: “Yeah, the same’s true when we do try to learn from each other. Anybody ever had a conversation about sex, a serious conversation, I mean, with boys and girls – women – together? And don’t start about mothers, or sisters…they either clam up, or make jokes. At least mine did.”
Jeanne: “Have any of you ever looked at yourself? Or someone else? Down there, I mean. I’m gonna be a doctor, and I’ve looked at those anatomy books and drawings. But that’s isolated, and two dimensional. I wish I knew more, and I don’t even have a boyfriend, not like Janie.”
Esther looked back at me, raising an eyebrow and cocking her head to one side. “Well…?”
I considered her unasked question. Mike and I never did talk about what we were doing, kissing, feeling, lying together. “It almost seems a cliche, but I want him to love me…I think…I feel the way to do that is hold him close, have him feel that without me asking or telling him. Does that make any sense?”
“Has he asked you to do anything you don’t want to?”
“Nooo. He’s unsure, I think, a little frightened of scaring me away.”
Esther nodded. I couldn’t think of what else to say, so she turned to Jeanne. “Why don’t you all bring a mirror when we meet again. There’s something I’ve been wanting to try with a group, see how it works.”
Two weeks later, Nathan away at a Celtics’ game, seven of us were gathered in a circle. We each had a mirror – compacts, handheld, round, square, all kinds. Esther brought out two flashlights, and trained her floor lamps into the center.
“Is anybody going to feel uncomfortable if we take our clothes off, and look at ourselves? Has anyone tried to do that before?”
Marcia giggled nervously. “Playing doctor?”
“No, I mean since you grew up, got bigger, filled out, started having periods, all that.”
Another girl nervously said, “How would you do that? We’re not dogs, we can’t, like, lick ourselves.”
Jeanne lifted her hand mirror and waved it a bit. “I get it. That’s what this is for, right?”
It felt a little funny – no it felt a lot funny – but we all took off our pants or skirts, shed our underwear, drew up our knees, and held the mirrors between them. Gasps, laughs, and sighs emanated softly from the circle.
Esther was speaking. “Now, if you’ve ever put a tampon in, you have a general idea. Uh, nobody’s on her period now, right?” No response. She went on. “You probably never stopped to look, you just wanted to get it out and in, didn’t pay any attention to anything else down there. So. Take your hand, your free hand, and make a ‘V’ with the first two fingers, pointing down. You see those wrinkly things in the middle?”
“Labia?” someone said.
“Right. Labia. Means lips. Let’s call ‘em that, OK? Try to push them apart gently, slowly, with your two fingers, push them wider.”
It was a little tricky for me, someone without a lot of hand/eye coordination, to navigate that maneuver looking through a mirror, but I soon got it. “My hair keeps getting in the way!” I groused.
One of the new girls, a blond with thin wispy locks, grumbled, “At least you’ve got some.”
“Ah, there it is!” I exclaimed.
Next to me, Jeanne turned her head. “What is?”
“My hymen!”
That same blond, a bit more dejectedly this time, said, “At least you’ve got one…” Giggles all around.
Pale pink inside the darker crescent of those lips, a few ragged tags surrounded a narrow dark abyss. It looked so small, so vulnerable, so … lonely? “No way anything fits through there, Esther.” I whined.
“You mean a new born baby’s head?”
The girl next to me let out a shuddered, “Eew! No way”.
Esther went on. “We can’t see it well, ‘cause we’re not looking all the way inside, but the vagina, that whole area, is pretty elastic. Think of one of those little drink umbrellas, or a fan. It’s all compact when folded. But open it up, see how big it is.”
Jeanne blurted out, “Where’s my clitoris?”
Marcia snickered, “You sure you’ve got one?”
One of the other girls said, “Clit..Clit-us? That’s not something they told us about in Health. They named it, pointed to it in those drawings, but didn’t seem to say much about it.”
“OK, the clitoris,” Esther declaimed. “To me, this is where the magic happens. Anatomically, it’s the same thing as a penis on a boy.”
“But it never grows or gets big?” someone asked.
“Oh, it can grow, can get bigger. But that’s not the point. You know how sometimes boys seem to be focussed on nothing but their dick?” More laughs. “Well, we’ve got all those same nerves they have there, but all compressed, compacted into that little spot. So much more sensitive, so much more…powerful…when it comes to feeling sex.”
On the way back to Cabot, Jeanne wondered, “I don’t know if that helped or not. I’m still afraid of doing anything with a boy, even more afraid now, they might hurt me there. Marcia, Janie…?”
Marcia slowed, looked away, and, keeping her head down, said, “There was this guy, senior year. He took me to the prom, in his parents’ station wagon. Somebody must have put something in the punch, or maybe he did it to my drink. I was so tired, I couldn’t fight, after he folded the seat down in the back of the car. I don’t know if he did anything or not, I was so out of it. It didn’t feel like it afterwards, my clothes were still clean, I wasn’t sore or bleeding or anything. But he still bragged about it to his friends the next week. Nobody said anything to me, but they all gave me looks, like, ‘Oh, the great Marcia Levine, she’s not so smart after all’…”