Chapter 5

Student life now began, and a new town to explore. It was not Oxford or Cambridge, but an interesting seaport. I left home without a pang, and my parents, proud and stately, bade me a gracious adieu. I settled in a hostel, and quickly made new friends.

Everyone's idea of student life is the same, and it is true, inasmuch as students try half-consciously to live in accordance with it. The pattern is one of sport and idling, violent last-minute spurts of work, outbreaks of disorder, exploits to help some oppressed minority somewhere, all-night arguments on philosophy or modern art, passionate friendships with one's own sex, masquerades and practical jokes, "good times" with barmaids and shopgirls.

All of this I had, including the emotional friendship, though my aesthetic soulmate meant nothing to me physically. In fact, I thought after falling in love with Jean that my sex life had taken on the official colouring, and that I should never again have any affairs with males. Not that I had any remorse for those of the past: I simply thought they were a part of growing up, and were now left behind. I did not know myself. I did not know that I was destined never to leave any part of my life behind, that the feelings and experiences of childhood, of adolescence, of young manhood would always be alive in me, and that there was no limit in my nature to the range of sexual desires. Slowly, over the years, this truth was revealed to me.

Continuing to write love-letters to Jean, I never thought of trying to be "faithful" to her. The idea of "fidelity" never came naturally to me. I was anxious to find some willing girl who would relieve the head of steam engendered by the absence of Jean.

My student friend and I had a joint flirtation, or friendly rivalry, over a girl student of seventeen, a fluffyhaired blonde whom we both fell for when she played in a college production of A School for Scandal. She was slight of build, brilliant of complexion, witty and talkative; she knew almost nothing, and was uninterested in the things that we liked to argue about. She played one of us off against another, and in the end I got into a perfectly desperate state about her. She would let me kiss her and fondle her tits, but never allowed my hand to get above her knee. My friend got the same treatment-we compared notes, of course-but he took it all as a joke, and I began to want that girl quite madly. I told her point-blank what I was after. She simply laughed and wisecracked me.

Finally I told her I could stand no more of this frustration. I didn't want to see her again unless an until she decided to surrender. She ridiculed me, and we parted.

I tried to put her out of my mind. I would cuddle my pillow and think of Jean on the sunny beach, or go to sleep and have a dream in which a man in a mackintosh was forcing his prick into my mouth or a dog was licking my balls, making me gush into th bedclothes. In one delicious dream, I put a glass chamber-pot under the bottom of my cousin Lizzy, and lay down to watch while she made pee and shit in it. She exclaimed, "I'm busy," and seized my prick between her two bare feet. I came on her toes.

With these bizarre dreams and my quota of masturbation, I let off some of the pressure. But work ana sport did nothing to diminish my sensuality, as they are supposed to do.

One day I was called to the telephone in the hostel.

"Hello," said Margaret, the fluffy blonde, in a light flippant tone. I waited to see what she wanted.

"I'm bored with not seeing you," she said. "I used to like seeing you, you know. Is it necessary?"

"You know what I said. I don't want to go out witn you unless you are willing to sleep with me."

"Mm."

"Are you willing?"

"O well-if I can't talk you out of it."

I realized that she had actually rung up prepared to make the great surrender. My hopes, spirits and self-esteem leapt to the top of the barometer. I made a date with her for the next night.

I had a friend, not at college, who lived in a bachelor flat, and who was kindly disposed towards love and lovers. I rang him up. It was exceedingly inconvenient for him, but I coaxed, urged and practically compelled him to clear out and lend me his flat for the great occasion.

He did everything very nicely: even left us a halfbottle of wine.

I met Margaret and found it thrilling to see her again, to kiss her and touch her hand. For all her joking manner, I could see that she was excited and keyed up

We ate together, then went to the flat, read my friend's note of welcome and drank his wine.

We were in a perfect setting, we were enjoying each other's company, our conversation skated gaily on the subject we had in mind, and I had never felt more triumphant. We sat on the divan. We reclined. We kissed, and at last she allowed me to play with her soft parts.

"Are you a virgin?" I asked. "Yes."

My pride inflated another degree. My prick was eager: I put her hand on my trousers and she held the lump of flesh with evident curiosity. I undressed her. A slip of a girl, but most delicately moulded, rosy and flawless, with coralline nipples, blonde pubic hair and a beautiful mound of Venus. She lay back and opened her legs to receive me.

I stripped in haste. But what had happened to my cock? It was flabby and useless. I frigged it furiously but it positively shrank. I lay down beside Margaret, kissed her lips and her nipples, ran my hands all over her, played with her cunt till it was oily-wet, explored her bottom. I put her hand on my prick and she toyed with it helpfully. But all to no purpose. It simply would not rise. Here I was with the most desirable and desired of girls at my disposal, ready and waiting for me, and found myself impotent! It was ghastly.

In a vain attempt to cover up my humiliation, and a vain hope of overcoming it, I climbed on to the girl, in position for a fuck, and began the motions. But though my most sensitive nerve was a-quiver, and sensation was rising, the flesh was as soft as the lobe, of an ear. I breathed fast and strained. Sensation itself was dying out in me.

Inevitably, though in a gentle voice, came the question: "What's the matter?"

I could not say. I cannot to this day, though the same thing has sometimes happened on other occasions; not often, thank heaven.

It was no use. I had to give up, though for almost an hour I tried to coax my prick to do his duty. I even (for the first time) brought the images of other people to mind, to try to stimulate myself: Jean, Lizzy, Ruby, the Major, all were sacrificed to the occasion. But they left me colder than ever.

Margaret said she must be going, and got up and put her clothes on again. Now, I thought, she really has a right to laugh at me. But she did not, although she must have felt bewildered, and vilely cheated. Very little was said.

We left my friend's flat, kissed goodbye and parted without further talk.

I walked about in the rain, wondering whether my affliction was permanent, whether my sex-life was over. At length I went home and to bed, in the bleak student hostel. I lay sleepless, and very near to tears. But what was this? I had a huge, fighting-fit erection, which a sledge-hammer could not have bent. And sexual images swarmed into my mind-of everything but Margaret. It was the little foreshore Venus who stood, naked and lovely, before my eyes, as I spurted into the bedclothes.

My bosom friend took Margaret's virginity, not long afterwards, and described the fuck to me in edifying detail. Later on, I had her myself, several times, in cars, and dark corners: no difficulties! No great ecstasies, either.

Was I inhibited about Margaret in the first place because she was a virgin? I can't think so. I had other encounters with virgins, eminently successful and delightful, in due course. No, I think I had waited too long for her, wanted her too desperately, and found that dramatic self-offering was just more than I could take. A starving man can't sit down and eat a rich feast. Prostitutes say a sailor home from a long voyage is no good on the first night But there may be other, deeperrooted reasons for my flop. Why, since I thought this girl so superlatively attractive, did I never really have a first-rate fuck with her? Was it her touch of mockery? I couldn't escape the thought that she did not take me, or sex, entirely seriously. Why should she? you may say; for there is a funny side to the business, and I was no less ridiculous than young men of that age usually are. But without a certain seriousness at the heart of the matter, sex won't yield its full flavour.

The first time I had a virgin was a couple of years later. A student: and O the absurdities of student behaviour, looked back upon! She was a year or two younger than I, her name was Lena, she was studying biology, and to be truthful I had not paid any attention to her when I first saw her. She was a studious type, though with a boisterous laugh, and was rather strange in looks-the long, pale face of the Restoration period, with black ringlets; a very wide mouth. She was always surrounded by her own crowd, an excited, chattering crew. But one night at a student dance I was drunk, and found myself lurching round the floor with her in my arms; and then sitting out in a corner of the refectory, with the lights low, and everything swimming around me.

She allowed me to kiss her, but resisted my attempts to feel her breasts and her cunt. It was not difficult to resist me as my limbs were almost out of control. I asked her how many men she had slept with. I put the question brutally, just for the hell of it; just to force her to say "none." She did, quite coolly: "None. I'm a virgin." I told her she had no business to be, and that a girl ought to get herself a lover as soon as she started to menstruate. That was the law of nature, I said, and modern girls were "all miserable neurotics as a result of disobeying it."

I went on in that way till I passed out and began to snore. Whenever I met Lena after that I used to say: "Lost it yet?" or "When are you going to take me to bed?" or "Like to get rid of your neurosis-the hard way?" She used to laugh, and sometimes wisecrack me in reply.

Then one day I received a note, in the grand student manner:

I have decided to present you with my virginity, having thought over your arguments objectively and decided that they are on the whole sound. On the night of the staff dance it should be possible for us to meet safely somewhere for the ceremony, while establishing an alibi at the dance itself, earlier or later. I leave you to assign a place.

Yours, Lena.

To this letter, in which no word like "love" or "darling" occurred, I replied, "I am happy to accept the gift and will make the necessary arrangements."

Another friend's flat, this time. He was a homo, and thought copulation with the opposite sex the most fearful bad taste, but he "supposed people would do these things."

Lena and I went to the dance separately, met there like casual friends. She wore black velvet, doing her best to look elegant, her flesh looking startlingly white by contrast, her black locks and eyebrows matching the velvet, her face paler than ever, her lipstick bloodcoloured, her teeth shining as she laughed with a rather unnatural gaiety. We had a couple of dances together and drank some smuggled liquor in a car with other youths and girls. I felt amused and elated at the prospect before me. She had not changed her mind (I halfthought she might) and we made our plans.

I slipped away first, and had a half-hour wait in the drab little flat, warming it and myself before the gas fire: it was a frosty night. I wallowed in the flattery of her offer, with lurking fears that the case of Margaret might be repeated: she too had offered me that "gift," and I had failed to take it!

When Lena arrived, she had had another couple of drinks and was decidedly dizzy. I closed the door: she flung her arms round my neck and we kissed. I slipped my tongue into her mouth and she nipped it gendy with her teeth, then sucked it as though it were a nipple or something else. My hands meanwhile began exploring her shape, which she had previously tried to prevent my doing. I touched her moist, shaven armpits, the long slope of her partly-bare back, the softness of her waist, the firm hips and the firm cheeks of her arse.

"Don't let's go in the bedroom, let's do it here," she said, and sat down on the rug in front of the gas fire. "All right. Let me undress you." "In a minute."

We lolled in each other's arms for that minute, and a real sexy heat began to suffuse me. It increased when I helped her out of the velvet frock and the underslip, and unbuckled the suspender belt, and watched her neatly roll off her silk stockings. At that point we stopped again for kisses, after which I unfastened her brassiere. Now she had only her pants on, widelegged, silky affairs. Her breasts were firm and well-sprung, as befitted her eighteen years, but almost oval in shape, with dark nipples, and not very large. I kissed them, and made the nipples stand; then kissed the warm space between. What a long, supple body she had! At last I pulled down her panties. A soft-haired pussy, on a good mound of Venus, a pleasing small waist, long slender legs, a deep dark trench between the cheeks of her bottom. I'm not sure I really liked her.

She sat down and clasped her knees and watched with candid interest as I undressed.

"I've never seen a naked man before," she remarked.

My prick was enlarged but not hard, due to exertion or nerves and doubts. I stood close to her and without invitation she reached up and felt it, ran her hands over my balls, drew her fingers through my pubic hair. I dropped on to my knees and had the horn in no time.

"O goodness, I haven't room for that!" she exclaimed, half in joke and half in fright.

"Let's see," I said.

I put my hand in her cunt. It was not vyery big, but it was lubricating all right. I put a cushion under her bum to elevate it a bit, and lay on top of her, easing in. Her face twisted sharply.

"Does it hurt?"

"A bit."

Well, it had to. I played the fish slowly, drawing in and out only to the depth of my knob. She clasped' her hands round my bottom. My excitement increased, I suddenly wanted to be deeper in, to let her have it Up to then she had enjoyed it, though with some fears and a little pain in the stretched lips. Without warning I drove it in, and felt something give. She gave a whimper of real pain, and her body bucked like a colt. I felt, or thought I felt, the blood on me, and had the sense of triumph, at being the first to enter her, the giver of her first unforgettable experience of a man's body. I knew that every stroke was pain for her now, but I was in the grip of that natural, automatic rhythm that rises in its own sweet tempo to the climax. I put my hands round her arse, to clasp her closer and force it deeper, digging my fingers right in the furrow, the middle finger of my right hand pressing in the "eye of bronze," as Genet calls it. I clamped my mouth hard on hers, as if to stifle any cry of pain she might make and I mounted, mounted, mounted to my orgasm, till I spent, jabbing deep and sharp on the final strokes.

Then I lay spread and breathless across her, with my prick slowly going soft inside her, in the curdle of blood and come.

No precautions! We had simply taken the hair-raising risk, without even discussing it. We were undeservedly lucky, that first time.

The pain was not all that bad, she said, stoically smiling. Had I enjoyed her? I hardly liked to tell her how much; but I did, and she looked happy at this mead of praise. She had made her big gesture, taken the great step, and that thought in itself gave her huge satisfaction. We examined her cunt together, with curiosity. I was still starved of the sight. "Do you like it?" she asked.

I rhapsodised about it, playing with the bruised lips. Her bottom gave a little quiver as I touched the clitoris, and she began to fidget.

"I'm glad it's a nice one," she said, "because I want to have hundreds of lovers."

Lena never married or had children; she settled for the steady, obscure, academic life of biological research, with well-timed vacations for her abortions, and has easily achieved her ambition: it is several years since she told me she had passed the two hundred mark on her tally of lovers, and she was looking pretty well on it.

I wanted her again, straight away, but she gave me a most scientifically-reasoned argument that the future pleasures of her sex life would be greatly enhanced if the muscular tone was allowed to recover and the epidermic tissue to do something or other before we tried a fresh assault. I was, at that age, readily captivated by a plausible argument, and only insisted that I should have the next throw, and that she shouldn't immediately launch on that succession of other lovers to which she was looking forward all too eagerly.

She went to the bathroom, and I lay still in front of the fire, luxurious, half-erected again, feeling like the king of the castle, thinking of practically nothing.

The naked girl walked back into the room, tiptoeing sweetly back to where I was, and stood astride of me, smiling down. She had washed away the traces of the deed, her pubic hair was fluffy from towelling like the hair on a baby's head, and she smelt of perfume.

She was as fresh as spring, and I was tempted to do something I had not done before. I sat up, held the cheeks of her bottom in my two hands, and put my face between her legs. My tongue found its way into her vagina, where it lingered, then darted in and out. She ran her fingers caressingly through my hair, murmuring my name. My tongue then explored the hps, moving up till it flickered on the clitoris, which in my school days we used to call "the boy in the boat." This she loved: she began to jerk with abandon, and though I began to find it hard work, her excitement was mine, too, and my unemployed prick was hot and quivering. I squeezed with my hands, pressing her on to me: she squeezed my head between her clammy palms. She was wet again with her oily secretions, despite the recent visit to the bathroom, and the perfume was overcome by the fine young-animal odour of her body. Little moans escaped her lips, and she went rigid as a totem pole; then with an "er-er-er!" like an effort of the bowels, she had her splendid orgasm and collapsed on her knees.

Along with the sensual thrill, I had a feeling wich I am not sure I approve of: the sense of power, the satisfaction that I, I, I had made her into that tranced, rigid creature, and now into this soft, helpless one, with whom I could do absolutely what I liked: who certainly would no longer resist this rod of mine, wherever I might choose to put it. The feeling may not be altogether creditable but I suppose the male will experience it, willy-nilly, as long as the sexes endure, which may be quite a long time.

But in spite of my powerful position, I did not fuck Lena again that night. Her argument (quite false, I belidve) still dazzled me; and for the sake of her pleasure with future lovers, I abstained. I kissed once more her dark nipples, and the space between her breasts. She took my prick in her mouth and rolled her tongue round it, without any urging on my part, but I could tell it was only an act of kindness; her thrills were over, she was in a state of dreamy exhaustion. I did not want her to finish it without active enjoyment on her part, so I called it a day, and began to dress. She still sat there, saying nothing, her eyes almost closed, her long smooth body utterly relaxed and faintly rosy from the gas fire.

At length I kissed her back to life, helped her to dress, and took her out into the open air, which cut through the haze of alcohol and sex like a blade. Our college scarves fluttered, identical.

"Thank you for having me," she said.

"It is I who should thank you," I replied.

We shook hands.