Chapter 7

It had been a week since Laura had known the closeness that violated closeness with Kurt Wiley. It had been a week that found her avoiding any activity or any area that might bring her into contact with him. Sometimes her planning failed: She saw him several times. When they met, neither spoke. Laura turned away in shyness, but not before she had known the anger of Kurt's eyes raking over her body, sneering at her, telling her that she was a fraud the worst kind, the evil, teasing, non-providing kind of fraud.

When the week ended, Laura found that she had not quieted her buzzing mind, had not quieted all of the emotions that made her what she was. It was then that she sought solitude to remember all that had caused her to become what she was.

Laura left the office early and went immediately to the beach, avoiding the spot where she and Kurt had for awhile thrust together in love-making. She found another isolated sand dune. She concealed herself between it and another and looked out on the lake. It was sunset. The water was calm. It was remindful of another sunset in her life, one of an earlier time, one that had changed the course of her life.

Because Laura was raised in a small town that bordered a giant lake, she frequented the beach often for swimming and sometimes just for sitting and reflecting on life, the times and turmoil of a young girl growing to womanhood.

One day when Laura was about fourteen, she arrived at the beach later than usual for she had stayed after school to help mark examination papers for a favorite teacher. The sun was setting far across the lake. It was quite the most beautiful time of day for Laura, she always loved sunset best. She settled on the beach and looked far across the lake.

She was still sitting quietly after it had turned dark. Laura had forgotten the hour. She had lost herself in the beauty of the day and her thoughts. And they had been intense for she felt a rumbling within her that was different than any feeling she had yet experienced. She knew the feeling marked the beginning of womanhood, her ability for love, both its taking and receiving. She knew it, yet had no object for that love.

The figure of a man soon came within Laura's line of vision, and as he walked slowly along the beach, she thought that he looked as she felt; solitary, filled with thoughts, and caught up within the wonder of the soft, late spring night. As he passed her, he smiled. Laura smiled back.

"Nice night, little girl, isn't it?" he said pleasantly.

"Oh, yes, it's a wonderful night," Laura replied.

"This is the kind of night I used to like best when I was at sea," the man said, looking far out as if he were viewing the past.

"Were you a sailor?" Laura asked.

"Still am," he said, smiling again, his eyes making quick darts over her young body.

"Then why aren't you at sea?" asked the romantic child.

"I haven't got a ship anymore."

"Oh, you had a ship of your own," she asked, impressed.

"Yes." He paused, looked again at the lake, then turned and looked at Laura again.

"If I were a man or even a boy I'd go to sea," Laura told the stranger.

"Oh, would you now," he said, striding a few paces closer to where she sat.

"Oh, yes. The sea would be a wonderful life. But hot for a girl."

"So, you don't think the sea is for a girl, eh?" the stranger said, cocking one eyebrow high in a position of interest.

"Of course not," she replied. "It's like war-that's not for girls either."

"True," he laughed. "But I must say that Pirls females, that is cause enough wars, private wars, mostly."

Laura laughed too. She wasn't sure why, except that the man made her feel gay. Then she reprimanded herself for even talking to the man for she had been warned about strangers

about men strangers. Still, this stranger didn't seem like one who could hurt. And besides, he liked the sea, Laura reasoned, and men who liked the sea weren't dangerous not to little girls.

"Mind if I sit with you for a spell?" the man asked. "I'm tired of walking."

Laura looked at his clothes. They were a bit tattered and stained with perspiration, showing the results of recent exertion.

"Have you been walking a long ways?" she asked.

"Clear around the lake."

"Around this lake?" she asked, surprised that it was possible.

"Yip."

"But why did you do that?"

"Because I wanted to," he said.

"Because you wanted to," she repeated.

"Yip. For me, that's the most important thing in life just doing what you want to, when you want to do it."

She laughed, then said, "You make that sound exciting."

"Oh, it is, little girl, it is."

She looked into his eyes and they seemed to twinkle. Yes, they had the sea-look in them that Laura so admired.

"You can sit down if you want to," she told him.

"Thank you." He doffed an old, beaten-up Panama hat to her then took a place on the sand next to her.

For a while they didn't talk, only looked out on the lake. Finally, Laura broke their silence.

"How long did it take you to walk around the lake?" she asked.

"This is my third day at it. I should wind up where I started tomorrow morning. That'll make three and a half days."

"That's a long time," she said.

"It's a big lake," the man answered.

She laughed. So did he. Then they were silent again.

It had grown almost totally dark by the time they started a new conversation. And again, it was Laura who initiated it.

"Where do you live?"

"Everywhere."

"Everywhere?" she asked.

"Yes. Everywhere. And nowhere."

Laura laughed, for this seemed like quite the funniest remark she had ever heard.

"Those are the two best places in the world to live," the man said.

"You're silly," Laura told him.

"No. I'm quite serious. Really I am."

"Well, if it's not silly, how in the world can a person live everywhere?"

"By traveling."

"And how can a person live nowhere?"

"By not lighting too long at any particular place," the man said. "And that's the secret don't have any one place and keep moving."

"And the sea is the best place to keep moving, eh?" Laura asked him.

"Yes. The sea. It's the most wonderful place in the world for a man like me."

Laura nodded, then looked away. For a few moments, she forgot the man as she considered her own feelings, these new feelings that seemed to sweep over her whenever she was alone, especially alone and by the water. She couldn't describe the feeling if she tried. But she sensed that they had something to do with sex for the sensations converged upon her thighs and at her small, budding breasts. And she wondered what it really meant not what it meant by the standards of a biology class, but what it meant to her personally, what it indicated was ahead for her.

Then the man started talking again and Laura forgot about the feelings for she became lost in his words. They were so soft and confident and told of strange places. They kind of lulled her. And they made her feel excited. The man was very good with words. Laura had never reacted to words so enthusiastically, not even when they had been spoken by Mister Matthews, her favorite teacher who was known for his ability as a public speaker.

"The Pacific is really the best area of the world," the man said, continuing his discourse on the world and its waterways.

"Why the Pacific?" Laura asked.

"Because it's usually warm. Warm weather is the best. Except, of course, that summer weather raises Cain with storms and things."

"Have you ever been in a bad storm?" Laura asked. "A really bad one, I mean?"

"Man, many times," the stranger said, leaning back a bit. "Typhoons are the worst, of course."

"Typhoons! Heavens!"

"They're pretty horrible. But exciting, too."

"Were you honestly in a typhoon?" Laura said, her voice lifting in excitement.

"Yip. Been in about a dozen of them, I guess. They're real fun."

"Fun? Heavens!"

"Well, by fun, I mean that they keep a sailor pretty awful busy and when it's all over a man feels good."

"Feels good? I'd think he'd feel tired."

"Oh, a man feels that, too," he said. "It's kind of a combination. You've had all the excitement of the typhoon all the danger and the hundreds of things you have to do to a ship when you're involved in something like that but after it's over, a man kind of knows that he's won that he's really beaten the typhoon; maybe even beaten or defeated the god who caused it."

"Gosh."

"And, as you say, he's tired. But it's a good kind of tired feeling. There's a lot of satisfaction with it."

Laura raised her legs and circled her knees with her arms. She hugged her knees to her breasts, pointing rather sharply out from the thin blouse she wore. She hugged herself tight. It was as if she were seeking to restrain the excitement she felt from bursting clear through her from leaping out, right into the water.

"And of course the islands in the Pacific are beautiful," the man said in a soft, kind of faraway tone.

"I'll bet they're beautiful."

"The most beautiful spots in the world, I think," the stranger said. "The Admiralty Islands are nice. So are the Grace Islands. And I like Guam, too. The people of Guam are very nice. But it's on Manus Island that I came across the strangest natives."

"Manus Island?"

"Yes. The women there are particularly beautiful."

"But they have poor teeth, I bet," Laura said excitedly, finding at last the value of geography classes. "I know they have poor teeth because most natives have poor teeth."

"Only the people that live on the lowlands of Manus," the man explained. "The people who live higher have the water streams and there's lots of iron and minerals and chemicals in the water that's good for their teeth, so the people in the highlands have fine, strong, white teeth just like yours."

"Mine aren't so good," she said.

"Sure they are. Let's see."

Laura giggled and turned her face away from him.

"Come on," he said, a slight laugh in his tone. "No."

"Please." It was a plea.

Laura turned her face toward him. She wanted to smile but because of the conversation about teeth, she withheld it, for then she would be immediately complying with his wish. Something told her that a woman even a girl should never comply immediately with the wishes of a man.

The man reached his hand out and gently cupped Laura's chin. "All right now, open up, let's see those pearly gates."

Laura laughed. She could not help it.

"That's better," the man said, also laughing. "Now just hold that pretty mouth open for a little bit."

Laura opened her mouth.

"Oh, your teeth are beautiful," the man breathed, much as if he had truly been sensitized by them.

While Laura held her mouth open, the man very slowly fingered across, but within her lips, rubbing across the even white teeth.

"Oh, my, yes your teeth are even prettier than those of the native girls on Manus Island."

Laura laughed, then shut her mouth. She felt odd. It was as if she could still feel the imprint of the man's finger against her lips and teeth. And she didn't dislike the feeling. As a matter-of-fact, she admitted to herself, she rather liked the feeling. She wondered if she really missed the touch of him at her mouth.

"Yes, indeed, the girl natives on Manus Island are a little short of having teeth as pretty as yours," the man said, using a tone that indicated that he was about to discourse further on the nature of places and people of far away lands.

"What kind of clothes do they wear?" Laura asked.

"Clothes," the man said, a little surprised. "Why they don't wear any."

Laura flushed, then said, "Ah, I bet they do. My geography book says that they wear grass skirts and and things."

"Your geography book is wrong," the man told her flatly.

"You're kidding."

"No, I'm not."

"You are too. You have to be. Books school books don't lie."

"That one did if it said that the native girls of Manus Island wear clothes. They don't. They're completely uninhibited."

"Uninhibited?"

"Yes. That means they don't have any false modesty about themselves."

"False modesty. What's that?" she asked.

"Well, it kind of means that people don't put much stock in what other people tell them that's right and wrong that they kind of make that decision for themselves, and that they usually try to live as naturally as possible. Therefore, people who want to live that way don't like the use of clothes especially."

"Gee," Laura said, obviously impressed, interested, too, for she immediately asked, "But you mean people don't think it's funny for someone to go around without any clothes on?"

"Of course not. When I'm in the islands, I live like the people there."

"You mean you--" She halted abruptly, aware of the intimate conversation she had started.

"That's right. I go without clothes. It's really great sport. It makes a person feel free. Really free."

"Free." She repeated the word in a rather reverent tone.

"Yes. And, young lady, I'll tell you that that's the very best thing in the world that a person can feel or be. Free. Free."

Laura looked into his eyes and although it was dark she was sure that she saw a spark of happiness there that had lighted because of their conversation and because of the stranger's consideration of freedom and all that it meant.

"I've never thought much about freedom," Laura said seriously. "Except of course in history and civics class you know, like things about our country and the freedom that it's built on."

"Freedom is more things that the choice of a government," the man said knowledgeably. "Freedom is a state of mind."

"A state of mind," Laura repeated, saying the words slowly as if this would help her understand.

"That lake's free," the man said, suddenly raising his arm and pointing out to the darkness that was water.

"Yes," she said, following the direction he gazed.

"And it's freedom when a person a person like me, one who is a sailor and just wonders well, when a person like me can choose to walk around a lake because he wants to, then does it, or chooses to take his clothes off and go swimming in the lake."

Laura did not answer. She was thinking what it would feel like to swim nude in the lake. She had never really considered it before, although she had heard some boys mention how they did it all the time. But it had always seemed like a thing that boys would do not girls. Yet, the thought intrigued her. She had been made intrigued with it by the man's easy pouring words, by the way they created a mood for her from which there was no escape. And the mood was a sensual one. Laura recognized it as this. And she knew that it was concerned with many things, that it was relative to her age, her blossoming womanhood, the night and the stars and the talk of far away islands and natives who went without clothes it was relative to all of this, Laura knew, even without knowing that the proximity of the man, the fortune and misfortune of his arrival on the scene at the exact time that she was looking out into the lake, and the impact of his words and mystery and charm, all had much to do with the mood that had been created, the lazy, sensual mood that made her a pawn of another's will.

"Have you ever known the freedom of swimming in a wonderful lake without clothes on?" the man asked.

"Oh, no," she exclaimed.

"Why did you say it that way?" he asked, a smile playing about the corners of his eyes.

"What way?"

"As if it were something to be ashamed of."

"I didn't say it like that."

"Yes you did."

"Well, maybe."

"But why?" he asked seriously, truly curious. "I don't know."

"Think about it," he advised. "Think about it consider why, then realize how silly it is for people to deny them sensations that they deserve."

"What do you mean by that?" she asked.

"I mean that no one in the world should deny themselves new experiences. That people should have the opportunity to experience every feeling in the world. That if a person wants to swim in a lake naked they should do it."

"But it's-it's not nice," Laura said.

"Bosh," the man exclaimed.

"Well, it isn't. And that's the truth."

"It's the false truth," the man said, shaking his head sadly.

"And it's against the law," Laura added.

"Whose law?" he asked.

"Well-"

"Go on, what law is it against?" the man said, the words urgent and quick now.

"Well, it's against the laws of the city this city, for one thing," Laura said.

"That's right," the man said very definitely. "And that's exactly one of the things that's wrong with the world. It's man's laws man's false laws that say a person shouldn't swim naked, but it's not natures' laws. Nature says that man and woman should do anything they darn please so long as it doesn't hurt other people. And, little lady, swimming naked or living on an island with natives doesn't hurt anybody else in the world."

Laura was taken with the sincerity of the man's tone. She could tell that he believed exactly what he said. And in a sudden flood of enthusiasm she knew that she believed it too. She had no precedent for the thought, but she knew it nevertheless.

When Laura stopped thinking and looked at the man again he was staring directly at her. It made her feel funny. Not bad. Nice. "So, it's a hot night and if you'll excuse me for a minute, young lady, I'm going to take a little dip into freedom," the man said.

Laura watched him as he stood up. She continued watching him as he peeled his shirt from his shoulders and dropped it on the sand. She was surprised that he was so muscular. And she was surprised at herself that she didn't feel the least bit of embarrassment at the sight of a male undressing in front of her. For some reason, it seemed natural. Right. Proper. And free.

The man raised after kicking off socks and shoes and releasing his trousers and under-shorts. When he was nude, he turned and faced Laura.

She did not gasp. She did not turn away from this first sight of a man's full nakedness. She stared; straight ahead at the man and especially at that which designated him as such.

"Are you coming in?" the man asked. "The water should be great after soaking up the sun all day long."

Laura did not trust her voice to answer. She shook her head.

"Ah, come on. Join the fun," the man urged.

"I I should be going," she finally said. "It's early." He took a few paces closer to where Laura sat on the beach. "But--"

"Okay, forget it," he said, a note of disgust in his tone. "If you're like all the other crummy people in the world who let other people dictate their lives for them, well, then, just sit there and envy me."

He turned and started for the edge of the lake.

Suddenly, Laura felt a desire to please this stranger, this man who had come out of the night to sit and talk of foreign lands and strange people.

"Wait," she called. He turned.

"I I think well, I just think I'll take a dip, too," she said.

The man smiled. He walked back up the beach and paused in front of Laura. Then he reached his hand down to her. When she took it, he pulled her to her feet.

She looked into his eyes. She was surprised that the sight of his nakedness, the reality of it so close to her, did not cause her to stare continually, that she was able to look into his eyes and feel unembarrassed. And she knew that it was because of the manner of the man, his casualness, his talk of freedom and the naturalness of life and people.

"Well, come on let's hurry before some old monster raises up from the sea to grab you."

Laura laughed. She felt very good. The man was the most interesting person she had ever met.

"All right, turn your back and I'll undress," Laura said.

He grinned. "Now you're being unconventional again. Besides, it's so dark I can hardly make you out from this short distance."

"But if you watch, I'll feel funny."

"Poor conventional girl."

"I'm not that."

"What?"

"What you said."

"Conventional?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm beginning to wonder about that. I hope you're not. Here I thought I had discovered a rare jewel of an unconventional girl sitting by the sea, and I sure would hate to be disappointed."

"You're funny," she said, laughing.

"No. Just happy."

Laura could not keep her eyes from another sweep of his naked body, and again she was surprised that he was so lean and hard and seemed so much younger physically than his appearance or voice had conveyed. And then she wondered if youth had stayed with him because of the things he believed, because of his unconventionality.

"Better hurry the sea serpent might come," the man said.

Laura breathed deeply. She felt her nipples harden against her thin blouse and she knew that they would be in that condition when she undressed. Again, as if trading the view she was about to give the man for the one she already had of him, she looked at his bare body. A slight difference had come to the posture of him. He looked stronger. Then she looked away. Feeling quite grown-up, she breathed deeply again, then unfastened the buttons of her blouse. She parted it quickly and slipped it from her shoulders, doing it as if she wanted to hurry before she changed her mind. Moving even faster, Laura disbanded the remainder of her clothing from her body.

The man's eyes roamed her young body, touching at her throat and breasts, at her waist and navel, then lower at her thighs and young legs.

"You're very beautiful," he said, his voice husky with sudden emotion.

Laura felt as if she had been kissed. Or caressed. And the man did it all with words and the tone of his voice. Laura felt filled with romance.

He held his hand out and took hers. Then they strolled to the shore. They paused, then walked into the water.

Laura felt the caress of water as she walked, raising the level to a point where it tickled at her thighs, especially at the joining they made. And again she had the impression of being kissed and caressed at that very spot. It was a delicious feeling, she decided. She wondered if the middle-aged stranger felt the same emotion.

When they had walked to a level of water that covered Laura up to her breasts, the man released her hand. He moved his own to a stretched, diving position over his head.

"Ready, set go," he said.

He dived forward. Laura waited until he had submerged, then she, too, sliced through the water.

The rush of the water as she moved beneath it made Laura feel a little like a water nymph. Or a mermaid. Or just a girl, swimming nude, with a man, and enjoying it.

They played together in the water for an hour. During their play, their bodies came into frequent contact with each other. Often, Laura felt the underwater jab of him against her hips, her buttocks, her thighs, and once, against her breasts as she leaped to tag him and making him "it" in the game they played. And when they did not romp in the water, they remained submerged beneath it, letting it move them and sway them, roll them around and back and forth. Sometimes their hands were joined sometimes they were not. Several times the man held her gently around the waist. But the embrace was platonic. He made no move to cup her breasts. Laura was surprised at this. She knew that men and boys liked to do that. She was even a little disappointed that the man seemed not that inclined toward her. And several times as they played in the water, hidden from view by the night's darkness, Laura herself made moves to come into contact with the man. Once she struck downward and very definitely came into contact with him. She wondered if it hurt when she struck him. But there was no sign or expression of pain that came from the stranger.

They left the lake as they had entered it; hand in hand, smiling, happy.

They moved immediately to the spot where their clothes lay in a heap. The man made no move to redress, so Laura did not make any move in that direction. And when the man gathered all the clothes up and stretched them out on the sand, making a kind of blanket for them, Lsura turned and sat down, still not feeling the least bit of embarrassment for her nudity. Or for the man's. And she even admitted that she like it the feeling, the freedom of the experience.

"Now, wasn't that refreshing?" the man said, settling on the clothes next to him.

"It was wonderful," she exclaimed.

"That's the girl." He paused, turned and looked at her and smiled.

"What are you smiling at?" she asked.

"You."

"Just me?"

"Yip."

"And that makes you smile?"

"It certainly does," he said. "A beautiful woman always makes me smile a beautiful, native girl like you, particularly."

She laughed. "I'm not a native girl. Sometimes I wish that I was."

"Well, you are tonight," he said. "To me, you are the most charming and beautiful native girl I have ever encountered. You are an exquisite young thing you belong to this night alone."

Tt sounded like poetry to Laura. She repeated it, saying, "To this night alone."

"Yes," he breathed.

They fell into a deep silence. During it, the man's hand reached out and took Laura's. In a moment she felt shock for the contact that he had caused her to make, yet, strangely, and to her surprise, she did not feel dirtied or cheap. She felt beautiful, felt rather selected that he had chosen to have her make this touch upon him.

Soon, somewhat to Laura's dismay, he pushed her hand away from his thighs. But it was only a momentary withdraw from contact, for in a moment Laura felt his arm circling her waist. But in a moment, this, too, he gave up. Then he turned and looked into her face.

"Your teeth are brighter since we've been swimming," he said.

"You can't even see them," she said.

"I can, too," he answered. "Come here, turn toward me."

Laura obeyed.

"Ah, that's lovely," he said. "Like bright jewels."

"But my mouth's closed," she laughed.

"Not now it isn't," he said, laughing, too.

Laura laughed again. The man, very quickly this time, raised his hand and again inserted his finger between the bite of her front top and lower teeth. Playfully, she clamped down on it, not hard, just enough to make it difficult for him to withdraw it.

"You've got me," he exclaimed.

She muttered a cannibal sound.

"And I do believe that you want to get me even better," he said. Now his voice was low and serious.

Laura did not know what he meant. In a moment she did, however.

Very slowly, the man raised his other hand and cupped it at the back of Laura's head. He didn't pressure hard, only enough to urge her downward and in the direction of his lap which became prominent for her as he leaned backwards and stretched his legs straight in front of him.

Laura did not understand what was expected of her, but the man proved to be an expert teacher. Very gently, he guided her head downward. When he did, she released his finger. But her lips remained parted until they were filled. Then he moved her head up and away from him. Then down again. Then in a series of quick movements until Laura picked up the rhythm on her own, made it her own, too, as she lurched to please this stranger who had come out of the night. She worked harder when the man started to utter sounds that told Laura that she was pleasing him, that told her that she was proving her unconventionality to the stranger. And within herself she felt a lust for unconventionality, too. She felt filled and moving, rather beautiful that she could cause such sounds of pleasure to growl from a mature man's throat. And when the man's hand reached between the contact of their bodies and fondled her breasts, first one then the other, she felt heat race up and down her spine, carrying tingles of excitement with it.

Laura soon reached a point where she was becoming inventive of her own accord, without the guidance of the man's hand upon her head. It excited her that she could think of ways to make him groan louder. It became a game. She worked hard at it. And succeeded. But when she started to move with a final spurt of speed, the man's hand was again on her head, his fingers tangling in her hair and forcing her back and away from him. She did not give him up without a struggle. She fought to stay bent and continue the inventive attack she had created. But the man would not have it. He forced her head up, then turned it so that she faced him.

The man was breathing hard when he said, "You're a tiger-a tigress-a beautiful tigress."

"Let me--" she pleaded.

"No there's something else for us."

With that the man pressured Laura to the sand, made her he flat on her back, awaiting him. She had very little time to wait or to wonder what would happen next. Like a sudden cloud he was above her, working at her, adjusting her legs and knees and making them firm and steady. And then he was looking into her face and lowering, coming lower and lower until Laura jerked from the contact, then jerked again and cried out.

The night seemed to have enveloped them as the man pounded at her. And Laura felt an integral part of that night of every night as she soon learned to rise and lower, to lurch, to make a machine-gun shot of her hips as they shot to the man again and again and again. And then, very suddenly, as if a bolt of lightning had pierced their darkness, Laura felt the gathering of a storm within her, at her loins, her breasts, at nearly every part of her.

She cried out.

The man did not answer. Only pounded harder, rounding the last curve that remained between them and the completion of their love act.

Laura's head spun. Her fingernails bit into the man's back. They raked him. They dribbled blood and it edged beneath her nails even as she dug them deeper and deeper into his flesh. And she felt her breasts swell up at his moving body at the very same moment that there was another swelling, and then its bursting, below.

Laura screamed when she was swamped with feeling. Then she screamed again when it sent her soaring into the sky and again the bolt of lightning struck, it seared her, split her wide open and left her panting.

And then it sent her to screaming again when she turned her head slightly and saw that a flashlight shined its beam of light upon the naked body of herself and her stranger-lover.

After that, things were a jumble of confusion. There were the police officers, the questions the endless, sometimes obscenely presented questions and there was the arrest of the man and her own several hours' stay at the county jail until her parents claimed her. Then there were more questions. And then there was the story that told of the man, a stranger in town, a wanderer who had violated her. She protested the story. She tried to share the blame. She was shouted down, told she did not know what she said. And there was the last sight of the man as he was hauled away.

When Laura was again at home and safely within the privacy of her room, she felt dirtied for the first time that night. Romance and dreams had been destroyed by the bright shining beam of a police officer's flashlight. She felt corrupted. Not compromised as everyone insisted was her lot. She felt corrupted and she knew that the corruption was within herself much more than it could ever be a part of a strange man who had walked around the lake and come upon her lonely spot.

It was months later before Laura showed a natural interest in boys. And always it ended when they tried to kiss her, touch her, or have themselves touched by her. To do so, it seemed to Laura, would be a violation of something that had for a little while been beautiful before dirt had been brought to the act by others.

During her sixteenth year, Laura experimented with sex. She gave herself to as many boys who sought to attain her. But with all of them she failed with every one of them she turned from them before either they or she could know sexual satisfaction.

And so it continued for Laura Standard until she met Kurt and then it still continued.

Laura stirred from her review of the past. She looked around. It had grown dark, as dark as it had been that night so long ago when a flashlight suddenly pinpointed the unhappiness of her future.

Slowly, unhappily, Laura pushed up from where she sat. She turned, then walked back toward the campus of Funston College, back to the reality of the life of a young girl who could neither give nor receive love.