Chapter 10
I decided I could not in any circumstances go back to the city from which I had started out, that University city still full of my old fellow-students, and of Rex's friends. As for the town where I was born, I was not a bit anxious to go back there, either: defeated, without a job, and hardly able to explain my position, unless with a pack of lies. No thank you!
Like most provincials, I was enamoured of the romantic possibilities of London, its bigness, and the feeling that in this city you could be anything or do anything, according to your capacities. I decided to try to live in London. Which meant getting a job very quickly. Unfortunately, I couldn't approach Rex's friends, who could no doubt have helped. But I didn't feel like knocking at their doors and telling them my story. I knew hardly anybody else. Even sex had to take second place, while I found a way to eat.
Answering advertisements, walking about the streetssome nights I was even too tired to masturbate! I would fall asleep, weapon in hand, before I had time to come. Or worse still, worries would edge into my mind and push the nice erotic fancies out. With a shrinking prick, I would find myself wondering whether to pay a fortnight's rent in advance, to keep myself from spending the money on food; or what was the fare to Ealing, and whether the job would be gone when I got there. That is a very bad frame of mind. To be unable to relax and think of sex before you sleep, that is really unhealthy. Before he sleeps and immediately he wakes, a man should always think of sex, dreamily and richly, erection in hand, whether he is alone or not. Then Pan will play the pipes close to his ear, and his whole body will be put in tune, for the night or the day.
And since the subject of sex has cropped up, I must here record the great change. It's easy to be wise when looking back, but I think I actually knew it at the time. I went to Paris an adolescent, with all that implies; I came back a man. Perhaps some new hormone was flowing. Perhaps I had been knocked into shape by painful experience, by a disillusionment and a couple of follies. In sex, I was still capable de tout of course; but I could never feel girlish again, or boyish, in quite the same way as before. I felt more like an independent person, nobody's pupil, or bride, or serf, or mere playmate. This I suppose was a step forward, and goodbye to all that.
About this time I became less the graceful Corydon, and began to flesh out in a more manly style. Nature spared me those betraying characteristics of the "queen," a lisping tongue and a swaying walk. I was very glad of that. All the same, however virile I might become in appearance, I could never turn into one of the "hearties" or settle down to a one-track existence. I remained what I have always been-a shameless sexophile, a lover of sex in all its forms. I overheard a snatch of conversation at a party, once: two men talking, and one said, "Don't you think he's a sex maniac?" The other replied: "No, I think he is the sane one. All the people who don't love sex, they are the maniacs."
I was delighted with that man. I never found out if it was myself that they were talking about. I hope it was.
In time to avert starvation, I got a job as a clerk with a firm of general exporters in Holborn. I had a room with a gas-ring in Regent's Park Road, and I ate my midday meal at a restaurant in Kingsway. London became more familiar to me, less a place of mystery and glamour. The first thrill of having landed a job also wore off, and I found myself one of the humdrum horde doing poorly paid work in a million similar offices.
To "better myself," in the handling of foreign correspondence, I decided to go to night school and learn another language-Italian, which seemed to be in demand. It looks, now, as if Fate, Destiny, or perhaps old Pan himself, took me by the hand and led me up that echoing staircase and into that small classroom with its greenish walks and flyblown lampshades. What a place to fall in love!
She glowed like an evening primrose in that dreary setting, among those earnest, angular, bespectacled men and maidens, of assorted ages and sexes; some of whom were nice people, jolly people, and some would perhaps have appeared good-looking or even sexually attractive if only she had not been there.
There are women, and even some men, who think Phyllis's looks commonplace. They say she looks like a million-a million other products of English high schools. Perhaps she does. To me, she was unique. But what is there to say about her looks? She was not tall, she came up to my shoulder. She had round, soft, rosy cheeks, still pudgy with puppy-fat round the cheek-bone, under the ears, for she was only sixteen. Her hair was straight, golden as the sun and so soft she, could never control it; she therefore wore it rather short.
Her eyebrows were fair and thick, her nose was small, her lips were protrusive and sensual. When she blushed, her skin looked unspeakably tender; and I became very adept at making her blush. She had decidedly noticeable breasts, inside her cheap little blouses or jumpers, a wellproportioned figure, and legs that were both shapely and sturdy. She had not much conversation, but she liked to laugh. Whenever I made a joke she thought it terrifically funny; and her teeth were very pretty. That was Phyllis.
Her father was a travel agent, and would like her to go into the same business in due course: hence the Italian lessons. She was much the youngest person at the classes. The next age-group was about twenty years old, but those two or three were uninteresting types, and I came next in line. We got acquainted without delay.
At our first meeting, I said to myself, "This is it. This is the girl I prophetically mentioned to Flora."
At the second or third meeting I had begun saying to myself, "Idiot, you're not in love, you can't be, you mustn't be! Do you want to tie yourself down to fidelity, betrothal, marriage and a nice little suburban home, already? There's no future in this, for you, my boy." I went on saying it for a long, Jong time, and denying to myself the obvious fact that she could twist me round her little finger, if she chose.
Fortunately for me, she was pleasantly stupid, and did not know her own powers.
Though I did not want to fall in love, I did want to fall into bed with her, very, very badly. Her laugh, the way she walked, and her lazy, nasal, sensual voice all had their share in making me randy. I could not look at the hair on her head without wondering whether the hair at her cleft was equally soft and golden. When she walked, just to watch the movement of her buttocks, smoothly rolling from side to side, from the back, gave me an erection every time.
But she was far from ready to be seduced. In many ways she was very childish, and used to give me artless accounts of school and home that made me feel awfully old and sophisticated. She would not go back to my lodgings, but she consented to go to the pictures and there we held hands in the dark and she allowed me some long lingering kisses. My tongue was eventually admitted, though she parted her teeth only so very little that I was afraid she might snap them shut and bite me any time. By and by this game had its effects, however, and she got tense and writhed a little, as my mouth watered into hers: we strained together, and her cheeks were burning, while I cupped her breast in my hand, but not inside the dress. This embrace went on till the lads in the rows further back made sucking noises, and she broke angrily away.
The second or third visit she let me put my hand down her neck and toy with her titties. The nipples were very tiny and pointed, and stood up immediately they were touched. She would not allow me to put a hand in her pants, but only to feel the bare thigh just above her stocking-tops. She also let me guide her inexperienced but inquisitive hand over the shape of my prick, outside the clothes, and she gave it a squeeze or two.
I had to go home and play with myself, or have a wet dream, and I felt I was back at the beginning. But that was inevitable with such a simple young thing, and I did not mind going slow, as I enjoyed it all so much. We sat in cheap cafes and drank soft drinks or coffees, while I gave her a romantic light-comedy account of my life, very watered down, leaving out almost everything related in these pages. She laughed and asked heaps of questions, and thought it all exciting. She even made me think so, too.
At last I admitted to myself the truth about my feelings. We were sitting in a dowdy little cafe. I had been through torments because she had been talking about a boy who was a wonderful dancer, and who was taking her out every week. I burst out all at once: "Shut up! Can't you see that I'm in love with you?" And she burst into tears.
This upset me more than ever, and I was in agonies till she dried her eyes. Then she assured me the other boy didn't mean anything. When I said, "Well, do I?" she said, "O I don't know. I'm too young."
Hewever, she invited me to her home. I didn't know what complications awaited me there. But at first, all went very well.
Her parents were pleasant, ordinary people. We had tea and were allowed to sit alone in the parlour afterwards, playing the gramophone. I had never gone through this courting routine before and felt a trifle awkward. But I played my part, and we had a few clutchings and tonsil kisses, though with one eye on the door in case someone should come in to offer us biscuits or ask the time.
She told me afterwards that her parents liked me, but wanted to know why she didn't have a boy of her own age. She said she did, and named the dancing partner, which silenced them. I kissed her and asked if she liked the partner as much as me. She flung her arms round my neck, at that, and kissed me quite passionately, declaring that the boy meant nothing to her, except someone to dance with. But it would keep her parents quiet-she pointed out the advantage of that!
"If I have two, then they think I can't be getting serious with one," she remarked. I had to concede the point.
After I had told her I loved her, and I repeated it every time we were alone, I made progress in intimacy. There was a big stretch of parkland not far from her home, and one evening we walked there at dusk. We found a couch of grass, where no intrusion was likely, and we lay on our sides, mouth to mouth, hip to hip, with thighs entwined, getting clammy together. I undid the front of her blouse, released those demi-peaches from their quite unnecessary uplift-contrivance and looked at and fondled them, which she now allowed as freely as kissing. This time I sucked the coral points, and put my tongue in the warm valley: she liked it, judging by the convulsive clasp of her hands on the top of my head.
I was determined at least to see and feel her cunt, this time, and I even thought I might deflower her on the spot; but she had her own idea of tempo, and I had to abide by it.
However, while she was a little excited at the touch of my lips on her breasts, something they had never felt before, I improved the occasion by tickling her knees, which were very ticklish; and running my hands over her thighs and crotch, quickly and lightly, tantalisingly, over the top of her skirt, which I remember was a pleated grey thing of something like gabardine.
Phyllis blushed, and smiled, and said, "Stop it!"pushing my hand away with no great determination. I played the same little circuit, making sure that my touring finger-ends ran right over her furrow and up the mound of Venus. The fourth time I did this I clenched her lips with mine and let my pressure linger. She was tense as a bowstring, and then suddenly relaxed; her resistance gave, as if a muscle had broken somewhere. I insinuated my hand under her skirt. I could feel the moisture on the outside of her pants.
She lay back passively, her forearm across her face in an attitude of embarrassment, while I pulled her pants gently down to her stocking-tops, and looked and felt and kissed the hole I had been longing for. The hair was indeed as fair and downy as on her head, the lips were firm and tight, the clitoris as prominent as a nipple, and the actual opening of the vagina so small that I was afraid I should never be able to enter it at all.
I probed about inside it with my fingers; she drew a quick breath of pain as my fingernail scratched her hymen, perhaps; I went back to lying full length and kissing her, while I worked her clitoris up to a quick little orgasm. Then I unbuttoned my flv, which had almost unbuttoned itself by this time, and pulled out the lot.
But Phyllis knew by my movements what I was up to. She sat up instantly and said, "No!" She even pushed her skirt down over her knees.
Perhaps her first sight of the male organ rampant frightened her. Perhaps it was just convention, or even fear of the consequences, which I myself ought to have been worrying about, as I had no protection except heaven. I coaxed in vain, and a physical struggle proved useless, too: I wasn't prepared to use all my strength, and really hurt her, so we were like two puppies tumbling about together and getting nowhere.
We finished up kissing again, our hearts beating faster than ever, and soon I guided her hand on to my prick. She fondled it with the clumsiness of a novice, while I was expertly touching her up to a second climax. I decided not to try again to take her virginity but to leave it to another occasion. I could see she did not know or care how to manipulate me with her hand, and she was frightened to let my prick even approach her cunt; so, changing my position, I pushed it between her breasts, and came a creamy pool there, which startled her to death.
As we went away, arms entwined, stopping now and then to kiss, I told her the obvious truth that our bodies wanted each other so much that soon they would have to get together, and she would have to give me her virginity. She hung her head and said in a low voice, "I know."
The next time I saw her I asked her when it would be. But she capriciously laughed at me, and said, "Never."
Taking her at her word, I suffered ridiculous and needless torments over this. Yet all the time I knew that what I had said was true, and that soon she would have to have me, and I would have to have her, because we were so much in love. (O yes, she had admitted it by now, she loved me!)
But was it true love, on my part? you may ask. True calf-love, perhaps. How long does a young man remain a calf? I had just decided I was a full-blooded man! Was I in love? I certainly thought so. I would never have tormented myself about any other girl's caprices, or worried all day long over some little thing she had said, or fretted about her dancing partner. I wrote eloquent love letters. We discussed how many children we should have. We agreed that we could be engaged the next year, when she was seventeen, and married as soon as I made a quick fortune.
All this was entirely sincere. I felt madly romandc about Phyllis, and convinced myself she was no ordinary girl. (She could hardly have been more ordinary, as a matter of fact: nice but no great beauty, pleasant without wit, respectable but not too prudish, and the real outlines of her character, like the bone structure of her face, concealed in puppy-fat.) To me she was extraordinary, the Golden Girl... And yet if fidelity has anything to do with love it couldn't be love. Before I knew what was happening I was in a sexual tangle with three girls simultaneously, and life was getdng difficult again. Somehow I just couldn't help myself. What with old habits, and one thing and another, I was unfaithful to Phyllis almost before I had time to be faithful.
Oscar Wilde says very truly that the young want to be faithful and are not, while the old want to be faithless and cannot. But for myself, I haven't yet reached the second stage and don't think I ever entered the first; I never remember trying.
However, for months, actually months, I neither seduced little Phyllis (beyond the point already described) nor ran after anyone else. When I masturbated, it was
Phyllis I thought about. But my sexy dreams were not so single-track! Curious people, of various ages and sexes, came into those.
While we were in this halfway, stink-finger, kneetrembler and gob-sucker stage of seduction, I got some admissions out of Phyllis. She confessed to masturbating frequently, and for several years past. Not only alone, but with a friend of hers, a distant cousin, who was an orphan and who stayed with her during holidays from boarding-school. As soon as she herself discovered -by accident-the pleasures of the fingertip, she taught her girl friend the art. The friend was even younger than herself, only fourteen now, and not yet ten when first initiated.
"She has taught a lot of other girls at her school. She'll be getting expelled," Phyllis remarked. "That will really be my fault, won't it?" and she went off into giggles.
I am pretty sure that conversation took place before I saw the little cousin, Elsie, for the first time. If I had never prised those confessions out of Phyllis, with that insatiable sex curiosity of mine, things might never have happened as they did. Perhaps I should have looked upon Elsie as a mere schoolgirl, which she was, and let her go her sweet way unmolested. How much better! (and what a lot of fun and everything else would have been missed)!