Chapter 4
Luck exists. Miracles occur.
Her own nature impelled Rosalind to comfort her boss while his wife's illness worsened. She watched him lose weight, saw him slip away into the frequent distraction of anguished thoughts and it hurt her. She tried to help. She was at least extra nice and worked to influence the others in the office in that direction. She did what she could at work; Roz and John Alston never saw each other, outside the office.
Nor did Roz see Charlotte, ever again.
Alice Alston died. Like the other people in the office, Roz knew that John Alston was better off. Like the others, she went to the funeral. Because it was her nature, she leaked tears-and saw that John did, too. And he was a widower. Yet, because of what his marriage had been, his spirits returned quickly and he became a better and seemingly happier and nicer man than before.
Time passed. Roz comforted him when and as she could, having found in him an object" for her needs for giving. She channeled her soft, gentle nature his way and the time came when he called her one evening, to talk. Six nights later, he called again. To talk. For companionship. A week after that, nervously, fearful of offending, she asked him if it was "right" for her to do what she wanted to do: invite him to dinner. He came. They became more personal in their conversation and when he took her to dinner a week later they didn't talk about Alice at all. Alice Alston was very dead; John Alston was very alive and so was Rosalind.
They went to a dinner theater, loved the meal and the personal aspect of the actors' acting as waiters and loved the play, The Fantasticks. That led him to take her to an amateur production of Sleuth, which they also enjoyed immensely. So they went to a university group's production of End Game-and hated it.
There was no sexual aspect to their relationship-not even a kiss. Nor did they discuss sex. They embraced, but that was now and again, briefly, as friends spontaneously sharing pleasure over some news or experience.
Roz thought about sex. She even thought about John. When she masturbated, almost nightly, she usually thought about him. She wondered if he didn't need sex. Or was he, too, masturbating? Did he have needs, as she did? How long had it been since he and his wife had balled? It was awful to Roz that if he did have such needs, she couldn't help him in that area too. She could not bring herself to mention it, to make any sort of first move, to explore the "normal" sex about which she knew nothing.
Months passed. A couple of men tried to approach her; she rebuffed them. The main owner of Premier Building and Loan, Pete Seaver, flirted with her and she was careful in not responding to the Big Boss. A coworker made what Roz thought was probably a lesbian approach. Roz played dumb. Once she steeled herself, forced herself to go to a lesbian bar. But she soon fled. It was ugly; animals prowling, all looking for sex, some hoping for relationships. It was both hideous and sad. She couldn't do it. And... she fantasized sex with John now, when she masturbated in the dark privacy of her bedroom.
Terence Herlihy and his wife moved away and he and Roz never met.
John. He was about five-ten, neither handsome nor ugly, with a handsome mustache and a good shock of brown hair he kept carefully trimmed. About thirty-five, Roz guessed, without being sure. He was built big, though not massively, straight and erect; he looked good in his clothes. He was straight, a man who always wore a tie and never even wore a leisure suit to the office. A nice guy. He liked cards and some board games; read biography and Time and the new flood of self-help get-it-together books. A quiet man. He'd quit smoking years ago. He was obviously careful about drinking and about gaining weight-and his feet were ridiculously big, like his hands. Yes, he'd played ball in school-second string. He was full of warmth and wasn't unkind even to waitresses and clerks, as so many people were. Though there was a quiet, comforting strength in the man, he was gentle even when Roz thought he shouldn't be.
One night after dinner at Rosalind's apartment, six months after Alice's death, he suggested quietly that they marry, Roz was astonished.
"You're surprised? I'm surprised that you are, Rosalind. Kids call what we've been doing going steady... and I love you. I need what we have and I want more of it. Permanency. To me that means marriage."
Her brain flew, knew a weird mixture of response and emotions. Then she began to weep and when he started to leap to her, she put out both hands in a forbidding gesture. "I've got to tell you something, John."
"About you? About your past?" he asked and when she nodded, blinking at the tears that already stained her blouse, he said, "I don't care. I don't want to know."
"I have to tell you." And she did.
First, about that mind-warping night so long ago when she'd heard her parents balling and had drawn all the wrong conclusions. And about her subsequent fear of boys-of all males. She told him about Mary. The girl at summer camp who had "seduced" Rosalind in her sixteenth year. It was good. They both enjoyed it. It was then that Roz had decided she was a lesbian.
"No! Every psychological study, beginning with Kinsey, Rosalind, says that most people have one or two homosexual experiences, sometime. But-"
"Have you, John?"
"Well, no, but-"
"Don't you see, I was conditioned. Programmed. I thought that... intercourse was some kind of attack. It brought the woman pain. I didn't want that! I wouldn't accept dates, I feared boys, I was fearful of men. So when Mary and I... did that, that summer, I just assumed I was homosexual. Gay, the militants insist on being called. Gay! God, I was never gay-that means happy. I was always nervous, afraid-"
"Were? Always?"
She told him about a couple of experiences, about the almost-three-year relationship with Dolly Helmer, the year living with Freda Wilkinson, the long hiatus after that, the relationship with Charlotte. She told him how that ended.
"Oh my God, Roz!" He looked jerky, as if he were sitting on a hot griddle; he wanted to spring from his chair to her on the couch. "Damn it I-I want to hold you, right now!"
She sighed, yearning. "And-what if... what if I flinch? If I hate it, can't stand it? What if I am a lesbian? It's all over for us then, John. I don't want that. I never wanted this. I-I'd even have to leave the office, find another job. We couldn't stand working together, once we both knew, after... what we've shared, what we've been."
"Friends."
She smiled sadly. "You said you love me, John."
He stared at her. With a sigh he quietly told her, "I love you, Rosalind."
"John... I love you."
They gazed at each other and it was as if the two feet of air and rose-and-gray carpet between them was a sprawling moat, meters wide and infested with monsters ready to swallow them up.
"I... I just don't know... if I love you," she said. "I mean... like a woman loves a man. You know. I-" He was nodding. "I know. And this isn't noble, this is selfish: I need you. I love you. What that means to me is that I want to marry you. If-if it has to be the old way, platonic, living together like brother and sister... I'll do it. I'm not being noble! I want you with me. That's pure selfishness. And-I think you need me."
Very quietly, softly, Roz began to weep. "I need you!"
He moved instantly to her on the couch. Enveloped in his arms, she pressed to him. It was good, being held. A sensation, a genuine imbuing warmth-security. After several minutes, she slid an arm around him. Her other hand lay on his leg.
It was strange. Through all the clothes, he was male. Large, hard, angular. She felt muscle. His thigh, with its overlay of muscle and skin, was nevertheless bony. and too, she knew that it would be hairy. Like his hands. And his arms. His chest, even. She thought about that. A chest that was just two plates, set with small nipples-and hair. Yet, except for the hair-that wasn't much different from Char's chest! She'd seen men, men with clothes on and not even fat, who had more breasts than Charlotte!
Snuggled in his arms, she thought about hair. She liked Char's unusually hairy cunt. Abruptly she remembered Freda, who had refused to shave her legs. Roz had liked those hairy legs- the mark of a male, loved by-lesbians? Roz had asked, practically begged Char to quit shaving her legs. "And have legs like a man? No thanks, baby," the big woman had said. "You want hairy legs, go get a man. And God save you from what else he'll have-all hairy and hard!"
Now Roz said, "I-John... "
He was holding her tightly, stroking her back. That felt good. He said, "Hmm?"
"John... kiss me."
He did.
More strangeness. She would not tell him, not for years to come, why she loved that first male kiss. Apart from the fact that kissing was nice and she needed it, he had the full brown mustache. Roz closed her eyes-and she could almost have been kissing a cunt, side wise. She licked it. It opened. She licked inside, for its juices. She loved it! Then it developed, not a tumid clitoris, but a tongue and she met it with hers, played with it while she nuzzled his mustache, sucked his tongue, felt him sucking hers, held him closer...
Three months short of her twenty-sixth birthday, Roz kissed a man for the first time in her life-and she loved it.
Like kids-old-fashioned kids, perhaps-they sat on the couch in her apartment and kissed, for minute after minute, for ten and then twenty minutes.
When her breast seemed whimpering for attention, she sent her hand after his hairy hand and brought it there. They kissed, with him fondling her breast through blouse and bra and she loved that, too. Their breathing speeded as their heartbeats did. And they kissed on, mouths open and tongues plying like loving wet serpents twining and licking and darting.
"John... John... " she said, lowly, after pulling back until her lips just touched his.
"Ummm?" He was obviously fascinated with her titty; she was glad. She hoped he loved them.
"I... want you, to-to... to come into the bedroom and... and... I want to make love."
She felt him stiffen. His hand ceased clutching her breast, but went tense.
"I... think I'm afraid of that, Rosalind."
"How pretty my name sounds when you say it! How nice your hand is on my breast! I-want you to have it. Love it. Both of them, both my breasts." She held his hand there while she sat back a little to look into his face. "John... come On. Into my bedroom. I want... I have to know. I want you to, to... to make love to me... " Such determination was unusual for her. She had to know.
In silence, he looked into her eyes for a long while. Then, slowly and while holding her gaze, he began unbuttoning her blouse. Roz was so glad she'd worn a button-front blouse tonight! When it was open, he spread it, bared her beige-bra'd breasts, gazed at the pale flesh that was pushed into high deep-cloven rounds by the brassiere. John Alston smiled. Slowly he bent, pressed a kiss into that center line, so that his mouth and tickly mustache nuzzled the upper surfaces of both her breasts at once. A tremor ran through her.
Lifting his face slowly from her breasts, he met her gaze again and held it for a long, long moment. Then he rose and he drew her up with him.
A little frightened, Roz took him into her little apartment's little bedroom. They did not turn on a light. Without saying it both of them thought it best for this, her first time with a man. A tiny amount of light bled in from the lamp in the living room. Like the uptight products of uptight upbringings, they undressed in the dark, in silence. And they joined each other on her bed... like millions of other Americans who weren't aware of their problems.
They lay naked, side by side, fondling, avidly exploring the newness of each other's bodies, stroking and caressing, rubbing and palpating, with her smooth rounded legs and his wirier, hairy ones rubbing each against the other.
A movement of her thigh and his hips tumbled against her, something Roz had never before felt. She gasped, knowing instantly what it was. His penis. His scrotum. His testicles. Cock and balls. The soft package of the male genitals that could be held nestled in a palm- until the penis had grown into a great woman-piercing staff. She trembled. She should have feared that... that dildo of real flesh. But she didn't. She had experienced Char's leather-wrapped dildo and she had come with it in her, gliding and for months now she had plied herself, probed herself, pleasured her confused self with her battery vibrator.
No, she didn't fear the emblem of his masculinity any more than she did the male hands on her, the male chest hard and warm against her breasts, the male tongue constantly moving inside her open, welcoming, sucking mouth with its own busily moving tongue. When she slid her hand between them for a tactile exploration of' his cock and balls, she felt him tense, heard him gasp.
"I want to know how you're made," she murmured.
Again he stiffened. "You don't know... you're-a virgin, Roz?"
"In a way. I'm open-I told you about that: Char-Charlotte. Um. Fascinating!" she said, feeling, fondling, tracing. "And this will grow and grow... "
"That's a guarantee, if you keep-uh!-doing that."
"I will, then."
"I... think I'll just slip down and kiss your other mouth."
Suddenly she clutched him. "Please don't," she murmured.
He understood. A mouth on her pussy was- familiar, the brand of lesbian love. He'd thought it might make things easier. But it wasn't what she wanted and he knew how brave she was, how much determination this soft, giving woman possessed.
While she went on toying with his rope of flesh and the large eggs slung in their furry skin-pouch just beneath, he moved only far enough to get at her breasts with both hands and mouth.
She liked the feel of his cock and balls in her hand.
She liked the hair that covered and encircled them, the hair on his thighs, the feel of his mustache and unsmooth chin on her soft breasts, sagging together as she lay on her side. They were already swelling, those jiggly titties, hardening, flaunting their nipples in thick erections.
"It's... growing in my hand."
"God yes! Just as these marvelous big nipples have grown in my mouth! If I'd known about these beautiful things, Rosalind, I'd have wanted them long, long ago!"
That reminded her. Nipples. He had them too, small, hair-crowded breasts that sprouted small nipples. As hers were larger than the erasers of new pencils, his were a little thicker than the lead in the same pencil. She wondered: Did they erect, too? Moving about, she got her other hand on one of his nipple-twigs. With thumb and forefinger and with gently raking nails the fascinated woman made him groan and twitch-and she soon learned that his nipples were indeed both sensitive and erectile.
Already they knew more than many after years of marriage.
In her other hand, his cock kept growing. Schwantz, she thought of it, from the movie Young Frankenstein. His schwantz thrust, hot and hard, at her thigh. She trembled; the strangely umbrellaed head of that big schwantz was so very close to her voluptuously developed pussy mound. Now her exploring hand seemed to have shrunk. It was small in comparison with his erected cock. Her fingers could only just encompass it!
The gasping, breast-nuzzling man was groaning around her nipples now. He thrilled to the sensation of her warm inexpert hand forming a glove around his virile dick and turning it into a jerking, throbbing bludgeon of violently needy maleness.
He... it... it's bigger than my vibrator! It-it will SPREAD me...
A great shiver ran through her and she tugged at that great throbbing schwantz.
"How-how would you like me?" she asked excitedly. "This way? On-on my back? With my back to you, under you? I-I want you to put it in me, John. I want to... to be fucked."
She felt the tremor her words imparted to his entire male form.
"Just... as you... are," he said and he pushed her with hand and head so that she went easily over onto her back in the classic receiving posture.
He moved over her. Accommodatingly, she spread her legs with a swiftness that was more than willing. He had not even touched her pussy. Now, on hands and knees over her, her first man reached down with one hand to guide his meaty big dick into the bulging, slightly parted and lightly furred cleft of her vulva.
She was ready. Her cunt was ready. It was open, oiled.
She only sighed as the thick, broad, wonderfully warm cock she had fondled but never seen came to her. Its warmth was exciting, marvelous, for only hard cold objects had previously entered her. It slid in and in, parting her soft outer lips, opening her inner canal, spreading its folds and rearranging them, distending the aperture between her labia and then the lips themselves, more and more while the pressure grew and grew within her belly.
"MY GOD! It feels WON-derfulll in meee!"