Chapter 2
PARENTAL PERMISSIVENESS A SEXUAL GREEN LIGHT
Permissiveness of parents, especially the mother, either subconsciously or by conscious acts, is one strong factor that contributes to a teenager's sexual delinquency. The parent of this decade is far more permissive than any parent at any time of history. Parents' own desire to retain their youth and their success in this accomplishment is a motivating force. And there are other reasons such as the mother's desire to work her own emotional problems out through her daughter or son; the father's "emotional absence" and physical absence from the home.
By now, most people have heard the story that was nationally publicized concerning a mother and her sixteen-year-old daughter, who was almost psychotically promiscuous. When all the mother's efforts failed to curb her daughter's gigantic sexual appetite, the mother, fearing a pregnancy, took her child to the family doctor and had her fitted for a diaphragm. If the girl's promiscuity could not be controlled, at least she could be protected from an unwed and unwanted pregnancy, the mother reasoned. But lo, some months later the child presented herself at the parent's knee and complained that she was pregnant.
"But where was your diaphragm?" asked the enraged mother.
"In my purse," explained the girl.
This story, although enunciating permissiveness, presents another motivation for young-aged sexual meanderings. Hostility. Some professionals claim that hostility is the strongest emotion involved in a teenagers' early introduction to sex and their pursuit of that activity. This is said to be particularly true in the case of girls. Boys, it appears, find outlets other than sex for their hostile emotions.
Today's parents are quite concerned with status. This urges permissiveness with their children. In the upper middle-income spectrums of society, children are often treated as status symbols, causing parents to allow early dating, the premature use of make-up, parties, etc.
"It is far easier to be permissive than strict," claims Dr. Royal Abbott, psychiatrist in San Francisco. "Parents today have an almost psychotic need to be loved by their children. If they are not loved and if the symbols of this love are not shown parents feel threatened. Therefore, we find situations where parents are permissive in order to be loved or admired by their children. Young people can put a lot of pressure on their parents for something that is wanted. We all know this; many of us have experienced the situation. So, it's not at all surprising to find parents allowing their children to do things that they should not yet be allowed to do."
Dr. Thelma Fishbien, a psychologist, has spent twenty years involved in the problems of youth and their parents. She feels that a basic insecurity that parents feel results in ultra-permissiveness.
"When parents have arrived at the age where they have teenaged children, they begin to look at their own lives. There is a basic insecurity in us all today. Parents feel this. And when they look at their children, see their gayety and hear their laughter and watch them awaken to the opposite sex, parents very often feel a severe resentment for their children. The parents ask themselves many questions: Where would I be today if I didn't have the responsibility of children? What fun I might now be having. Would I perhaps be more attractive at middle-age without the burden of child rearing? Would I be richer? Have more things for myself? Not have to deprive myself of the personal things I've always wanted. Would I? I wonder?
"Parents are aghast at these preposterous self-reflections," Dr. Fishbien continues. "They cannot show these feelings. To do so would be against everything they have learned and considered right about parenthood. So, because they have these feelings of resentment for their children, and because the feelings are real and not understood, the parents, to compensate, become extra-permissive, allow their child to do many things before the young people are of an age to do them. There are more parents feeling this 'insecurity' of their emotions as they concern their children today; therefore, we cannot help but have more permissiveness, sometimes with drastic and heartbreaking results.
The following case concerns mother-permissiveness and the effects it has on the sexual life of one teenager, in this instance, a girl of fifteen.
CASE HISTORY
Norma Jean was an ambitious girl and was said to have caught this spark from her mother, an attractive woman who had carved quite a career for herself as a television woman's fashion editor. When Norma Jean's mother married in her late twenties, she gave up her career and devoted herself exclusively to her husband, son, and daughter.
The Alberts lived in an upper-income neighborhood, noted for its exceptional school system and a parks and recreation program that had been developed for the community's young people, a program that was admired and used as an example by many less affluent communities throughout the country. Mrs. Albert, from the time Norma Jean was a baby, was active in community affairs. To many, it seemed that she had never quite been satisfied with home and family as her only career. Friends thought she still longed for the glamour of fashion and television cameras. Mr. Albert, a certified public accountant in business for himself, was civic minded, too, but he was busy at the office and had less time for such endeavors than did his wife. He heartily approved of his wife's many activities, however, often stating, "A person has to participate in his community in order to be happy in it."
From interviews with both Mrs. Albert and her daughter, it became apparent to the psychiatrist who treated the young girl that the mother was a "forceful, sometimes dominant, ambitious and status-conscious woman of above-average intelligence, looks, and poise."
Norma Jean's life until she was fifteen was quite uneventful. She lived a happy, well-adjusted life in a better than average environment. Norma Jean was similar to most of her peers in every way. She was attractive, probably more so than her friends because of her mother's former connection with the fashion industry. Norma Jean was allowed the use of make-up at age twelve, and she was allowed "party" dates when she turned thirteen. It was about this time that circumstances began to seem different to Norma Jean, she has reported. At this point of her life, her mother became ridden with sudden ambition to be elected to the presidency of the school P.T.A., a prestigious position because of the school's high standing among all secondary schools in the nation. It was at this time that the mother began to urge the daughter to more dating, even appointing certain boys as-likely subjects for her daughter's affection.
"It seemed as if I was being used as part of her campaign," Norma Jean has reported. "An envoy, or something. Mother would meet one of the women who was influential in the P.T.A., and she'd learn that the woman had a son. Well, she practically forced me to look the boy up in school. Usually, he'd ask for a date. When I told mother, she was crazy with happiness. She'd actually go right over to her notebook where she kept notes on the P.T.A. and the members and everything and then she'd scribble some note in it, as if I had just won her a vote. I was a little disgusted with her."
Mrs. Albert was elected first vice president of the P.T.A., a position that almost assured her eventual elevation to the higher post. But this caused no calming in her campaign to move higher. It did not cause any lessening of her attempts to toss her daughter with the child of one who might prove advantageous.
Norma Jean recited for her psychiatrist the circumstances under which she met the boy who was her first sexual lover a boy who forced indignities upon her that scarred her life and established a future that was to be laden with promiscuous capers.
Norma Jean had just turned fifteen. She had dated considerably with her mother's consent and her father's implied consent, for he left those things to his wife since she was thirteen. During those years of thirteen to fifteen, Norma Jean had known an introduction to sexual feelings. She had traded kisses, hot ones of the sharp tongue variety, and she had known the quick clutching of boys' hands upon her breasts and at her young legs. But she had remained a virgin, even when that status sometimes seemed in doubt of survival.
A few days following her fifteenth birthday, Norma Jean encountered her mother in the study of their home. Mrs. Albert was at her desk, working with the files of the P.T.A.
"Oh, Norma Jean, I didn't hear you come in, dear," said Mrs. Albert.
"Hi, Mom," replied the girl. "What are you up to?"
"More work. That school just swamps me with it." She said it as if she had been put upon, but Norma Jean knew this was a sham. Her mother enjoyed loved anything connected with a group of which she was a member.
"Well, you've asked for it," Norma Jean said.
"Yes, I guess I have." Mrs. Albert paused, shuffled through some papers, then picked up one of them and glanced at it. She turned to her daughter. "Norma Jean, do you know a boy by the name of Rod Baker?"
"Do I ever!" exclaimed the girl, rolling her eyes in a manner that indicated both her knowledge, and her disapproval, of the boy.
"You say that in an odd way," Mrs. Albert said. "What's wrong? Don't you like Rod?"
"Like him?" she answered. "I loathe him. Simply loathe him and so does every other decent girl in the neighborhood."
"Good heavens, why?"
Norma Jean looked away. She flushed a little. She did not immediately answer her mother's question.
"Why don't the girls like Rod Baker?" Mrs. Albert asked, her voice lilting with curiosity.
"Because he's a pig for one thing," Norma Jean said.
"Oh, really now," exclaimed her mother.
"It's the truth, Mom," the girl said. "He's just impossible."
"Well, I suppose a boy like Rod would be a little conceited, he's so . "
"Conceit is not his problem," Norma Jean interrupted. "He's well, he's a sex maniac for one thing."
"Norma Jean really," reprimanded her mother.
"It's true. Just ask any of the girls who have gone out with him. And he doesn't have a reputation just with us either. We know a few girls one especially who doesn't go to our school and she'll tell you about Rod she'll tell you plenty about him. And she has a reason to know had it for a long time and had to drop out of school for a year."
"What ever do you mean, child?" asked Mrs. Albert, a bit aghast.
Norma Jean looked away again. But quickly she returned her eyes to her mother's and said, "Rod got this girl pregnant, Mom. Then she had to go to one of those homes and have the baby and adopt it out and everything. It was just terrible for her. It still is, I guess."
Mrs. Albert's face paled. Norma Jean has reported that she looked as if she "had been slapped in the face." But in a moment, color flowed again, and she smiled at her daughter.
"We can't believe all rumors we hear, Norma Jean," Mrs. Albert said. "If we did, well, society would be controlled by rumors."
"This isn't a rumor, Mom. It's the truth."
"Well, I don't want to hear about it. It's a rumor as far as I'm concerned," she said, looking away.
Soon their conversation ended and Norma Jean left the room. But the next day, Rod Baker again became the subject of a mother-daughter conversation. It happened at the breakfast table on a Saturday morning. The two women were alone.
"I mentioned Rod Baker to you the other day," Mrs. Albert said.
"Yes, you did," Norma Jean replied, nodding, feeling a stab of curiosity for what was to follow.
"Well, you know his mother's very important in the national chapters of the P.T.A. Or perhaps you didn't know it."
"I didn't, but so what?" asked the child.
"Mrs. Baker has told me that Rod thinks you're very attractive. "Big deal."
"Don't make so lightly of it," Mrs. Albert said. "After all, he is just about the most attractive boy at any of this suburb's schools. And there aren't many boys who own their own foreign sports car and fly their fathers' private airplane."
"Rod Baker can fly away, far, far away, as far as I'm concerned," said Norma Jean.
Mrs. Albert made a frustrated gesture and said, "Sometimes you really are impossible, Norma Jean."
"Well, what's all the big pitch on Rod Baker all of a sudden?"
"It's not all of a sudden. I've always thought Rod was a delightful boy."
"But you don't know, Mom."
"I know enough," she said rather sharply. She sighed, then looked her daughter straight in the eye and said, "Norma Jean, Rod Baker is going to ask you for a date. I want you to accept."
Norma Jean recoiled a bit, looking at her mother as if the woman had turned into a monster of some grotesque design.
"Mom, you just have to be kidding," the girl said.
"I'm not, I assure you."
"But why?" she asked.
Mrs. Albert reached out and grasped her child's hand. "Isn't it enough that it's important to me?"
Norma Jean withdrew her hand, saying, "No, Mom, it isn't enough. What gives, anyway?"
The woman hesitated, but only for a second, then said, "Mrs. Baker is tremendously important to me, dear. More important than almost any woman in the P.T.A. And, darling, try to understand, that I do so want to head that organization, become a national officer eventually. I've worked so hard. And I well, I need this, dear. I really do."
Norma Jean did not reply. She remained very silent, and, during that period, she has reported, she had a fantasy of Rod Baker and herself having sexual intercourse while her mother looked on with an approving smile on her face. (Norma Jean's therapist thought this fantasy was of significant importance because it indicated the transfer of desire from mother to daughter, in fact said that the mother, by her problems, wanted the attractive boy for herself, but because this was too anti the society in which she lived, Mrs. Albert desired the boy for her daughter, in effect acquiring the young man for herself by extension of her own child.)
"When's he going to ask me for a date?" Norma Jean finally asked her mother in a kind of monotone.
"Very soon, I think," the woman replied. "And you want me to go out with him."
"Yes."
"Despite the things I told you the other day? Even if Rod is so fast that he forces himself upon every single girl he ever dates-_ in spite of this, you still want me to go out with him?"
"I've already told you how I feel about rumors," Mrs. Albert explained.
"They're not rumors, Mother," Norma Jean said, gasping the words out like a plea for understanding.
"I don't want to talk about that anymore."
"But you still want me to go out with him, don't you? No matter what kind of a boy he is, you want me to have a date with him, eh, Mom?"
"Yes," the woman sighed. "Yes, I do." Her voice had turned weak as if she were suddenly exhausted.
Mother and daughter looked at each other for a few moments. They seemed like adversaries, combatants who had met to settle some subtle thing that neither of them fully understood.
"Will you have a date with Rod, dear?" Mrs. Albert asked.
"Yes," the girl replied despondently.
"And will you be nice to him?"
"Nice to him!"
(This phrase, Norma Jean's psychiatrist has said, was consciously misunderstood by the daughter, her interpretation of the phrase being that her mother wanted her to have sexual relations with the boy be nice to him. But it is possible, the therapist claimed, that this phrase evolved from the subconscious of both the women, that the hidden meaning was sexual and truly understood as that by both mother and daughter.)
"Of course," Mrs. Albert said. "You know, mind your manners; don't let this thing about the rumors get to you so that you act rudely to Rod."
"Oh," Norma Jean sighed, then added, "They're not rumors, Mother. You just don't know."
When Mrs. Albert started to speak, Norma Jean interrupted her and said, "I know, you don't want to talk about that."
"That's right, dear."
"All right. I won't talk about it. And I will go out with Rod Baker. I'll go out with him just as soon as he asks me."
By coincidence, or by the caprice of the mothers, very-likely both of them, Rod Baker asked Norma Jean for a date just two days following her conversation with her mother.
"All right, Rod," Norma Jean said. "Friday will be all right, I guess." She hesitated, then asked, "Where are we going?"
"There's a real jazzy party up in Trektown, I thought we'd go to it. It should be a bang."
"Trektown!" exclaimed Norma Jean. "But that's way up north at least three hundred miles!"
"Yeah," Rod grinned. "We'll fly up. You know, the old man said I could have the plane for the night." He laughed hard, much as if he had issued the greatest joke ever.
Norma Jean, when she told her mother of the date with Rod, had thought the woman would show dismay at the fact that she would be flying three hundred miles in a private airplane. But Mrs. Albert was not dismayed. She smiled. She seemed very pleased.
"That's a long way to go, even in an airplane," Norma Jean said, hoping, it appeared, that her mother would at least agree.
"But not very far to go in that delightful plane of the Bakers', " Mrs. Albert said. Then she sighed and added, "My, how things do change. Now my daughter comes up to me and tells me she's flying three hundred miles on a date with a boy. Oh, well, that's the modern generation, I guess."
Norma Jean looked at her mother quizzically. Somehow the woman, in just a few words, had twisted the entire situation around, making it appear that her daughter wanted the date, had presented the circumstances of the date, and that she, the mother, had indulgently permitted it permitted against her better judgment, and now must worry and fret until her child was returned safely to the home, the date completed and behind her.
"Mrs. Albert was able, at least consciously, to resolve her own guilt for this unorthodox and threatening date that she had herself arranged, had even coerced, upon her daughter," said Norma Jean's psychiatrist.)
During the week that Norma Jean awaited the event of her date with the notorious Rod Baker, she had many conflicting emotions. At times, she felt like a young girl condemned. She even had the thought that perhaps she should discuss birth control measures with her mother. When she thought of this, she laughed almost hysterically, picturing the scene of a daughter at her mother's knowledgeable knee asking how to prevent a pregnancy that was certain to issue from the boy the mother had insisted that her daughter date. At other times, however, Norma Jean felt a smoldering interest and curiosity about Rod Baker. He was very handsome, three years older than herself, and he had the added attractiveness of the pre-knowledge that he was sexually oriented and sophisticated. And Norma Jean did feel awe that she, a mere girl of fifteen, was about to embark upon a date that included the boy of the night flying the family airplane. She knew that it was, to say the least, chic. But she did not mention the event to her girl friends. This was a departure from the normal procedure for Norma Jean and the other teenaged girls of the community. Usually they shared everything, especially information about boys, dates, all the secrets of youth that are charming and sweet because they are secrets the secrets of a group.
Mrs. Albert bought Norma Jean a new dress for the occasion of Rod Baker's courtship. When the girl first saw it, she thought that it was intended for another. It was extremely seductive looking; the skirt, a bell-shaped, cocktail-dress type, stood out in a circle from her shapely legs, framing them for the attention of any who desired to give it. And the neck line of the dress was plungingly low. It swooped in a V from the ribbon shoulder straps to a spot just below the bottom of her breasts. Norma Jean, being naturally large busted, looked almost half-exposed. And when Mrs. Albert presented her child with the new strapless bra she had also purchased, Norma Jean was certain that the purpose was to expose her young breasts completely. The bra pushed her flesh upward, bunching it and making her look large, an effect that was entirely unnecessary.
"Well, what do you think, dear?" asked Mrs. Albert, cooing her own enthusiasm for the new frock.
"It's a little scanty isn't it?" replied the child.
"Oh, I don't think so," said Mrs. Albert, standing back and viewing the total effect of the gown. "This is what they're wearing today, dear."
"I suppose," said Norma Jean. Then she looked at her mother and said, "You like it, don't you?"
"Very much. You look beautiful, dear."
When Rod Baker arrived to pick up Norma Jean for their date, Mrs. Albert was present. And, to Norma Jean's surprise, she acted the very concerned parent.
"You are careful in that plane of your father's, aren't you?" she asked Rod.
I'm a pro, Mrs. Albert," he answered, grinning crookedly.
"Norma Jean's only flown in commercial planes. Jets. This will be quite different for her."
"It sure will be," agreed Rod, grinning wider.
Then Mrs. Albert quizzed Rod as to where they were going, the time she could expect her daughter home, and the activities that were on the agenda for the night. When he answered each query, she wondered about the airplane again.
"But where in the world will you land? The North is so wooded," she asked.
"There's a landing strip right by the cabin."
"The cabin!" the mother exclaimed.
"Sure. You know, where they're holding the party."
"Oh, yes."
The young people took their leave of the Albert residence. Rod drove directly to the local airfield, where the family plane was kept.
Norma Jean watched with interest as Rod prepared the plane for flight, pushing it out of the hangar, revving the motor, listening professionally to the steady whir of the prop. And, as she watched, she told herself that she would really be excited about this kind of date had the boy been anyone but Rod Baker.
"We're all set," the boy announced, walking from the plane to Norma Jean.
Together, they walked to the plane and entered it. Quite solicitously, Rod arranged Norma Jean in the seat next to him. He fastened her safety belt for her, making sure, the girl noticed, not to lose the opportunity to bring his hand in contact with her lap, thigh, belly, and breasts.
Rod lifted the plane gracefully from the earth. The sun was setting as Rod first moved westward, then slowly turned the plane to the north.
Norma Jean was not foreign to air flight. But it was different being in a small plane. Moving rather slowly and able to look at the ground and pinpoint definite landmarks that she knew, for some reason, frightened her. Her belly pinched tightly, and every so often she was certain that she would faint. She couldn't understand it. Flying, nor heights, had never caused this feeling in her before.
Rod Baker handled the plane very expertly. Norma Jean would probably have been impressed with his skill if she hadn't been so frightened, but this feeling persisted. She felt blood withdraw from her face, and she knew that she looked pale. And the tightness in her belly continued, adding to it a sharp-pointed reaction at her breast ends, a side effect that she couldn't understand either.
Several times Rod Baker looked at Norma Jean. But he did not speak to her until he had brought the plane to a level and made some adjustments on the instrument panel. Then he looked at her. He smiled.
"You're afraid, aren't you?" he said.
"Yes," she admitted.
"You don't like heights, eh?" he asked.
"They never bothered me before."
"Ummmm. Something deep involved here," he said, pinching his face into a studious expression.
Norma Jean did not answer. Instead, as if testing herself again, she looked out the plane window. The farm land that they passed over was like a giant checkerboard of browns and plowed blacks, light yellows, and the darkness that was woods. Looking at it, Norma Jean again thought that she would faint. And this time, with the feeling there came a trembling at her thighs.
"You know, it means quite a lot when a girl's afraid of heights," Rod said, glancing at her and grinning.
"What does it mean?" she asked, hearing her voice falter.
He grinned. He looked straight ahead and pulled back on the stick, nosing the plane higher. Then Rod said, "Fear of heights in girls usually means that they're frigid."
Norma Jean did not know how to reply. But she decided that naivete was the best approach with a boy such as Rod, so she said, "Frigid? You mean she's cold?"
"Yeah. Sexually cold," he replied.
"Oh," she said softly.
"Do you know what it means to be sexually frigid?" Rod suddenly asked.
"No. I couldn't very well," she said.
"It means they get no jazz out of makin' it with a guy. No bang. Climax. No kick at all."
Now, Norma Jean's cheeks turned torridly hot, and the heat seemed to encompass the rest of her body, too. She did not speak. She didn't want to look away from Rod either. That would involve a visual awareness of the high height she was at, and she feared a return of the temptation of fainting.
"But I guess you really know all about that, don't you?" Rod said. "No."
He looked at her. "Don't kid me."
"I'm not."
Rod laughed. Then he made another adjustment at the airplane's controls. Then, to Norma Jean's shock, he raised both hands and deliberately brought them away from the stick.
"Rod!" Norma Jean nearly screamed. "You're not steering the plane!"
"Yeah, how about that," he said casually.
"Rod!! "
"Stop crying, chicken," Rod said. "You don't see me worrying, do you?"
Norma Jean looked from him to the land far below her window. Then she observed that the plane had not dipped and nose-dived downward as she had expected. She turned and looked at Rod Baker again.
"I've got a buddy on board," Rod said, smirking. "You know, an automatic pilot. It's jazzy makes it possible for me to keep both hands free."
With that, Rod made a lunge at Norma Jean. She recoiled as far as she could to her side of the seat, but because the motion crammed her against the small plane's door, she became petrified with fright actually froze to her recoiled position.
"Man, you're going to fall right out of this bird if you're not careful," Rod said.
Norma Jean said nothing, but she began a horrible trembling at every part of her body.
Rod swung his arm around the frightened girl. He urged her toward him, and her body did in fact move into close position with the boy. And then Rod's other hand moved to her breast, ascending from the safety belt to the open V of her gown.
Norma Jean gasped. It was the only sound to issue from her. She did not cry out, did not seek to restrain the boy's embrace, for, in truth, she could not. She was in the middle of two horrible frights: the boy and his aggressiveness, and the altitude of the plane.
"I think a little kiss is in order," Rod said, lowering his face as his hand slid into the neckline of her dress.
Norma Jean gave her lips. They were cold. Her mouth opened, not by desire, but by the force of Rod's biting, shooting tongue. She did not grip it and draw upon it. She merely endured the roaming exploration it made. And then she endured the exploration of Rod's hand as it went inside her dress and bra, felt flesh, cupped all of it, kneaded, pulled, then moved forward until he could twist her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Norma Jean did emit a few sounds, and they entered Rod's mouth from her own, but they were not sounds of passion; they were not the answer to the boy's own sexual craving. They were sounds that came forth from fear and confusion and from the strange turn her emotions had taken.
Very soon, when Norma Jean continued silent and inactive, Rod Baker broke his embrace, saying, "Man, you know, you are frigid."
He turned to the controls of the airplane. Norma Jean remained quiet, saying nothing, thinking of heights and the darkness that now totally enveloped their journey northward.
Rod pointed out the long line of lights that indicated the landing field by the cabin where the party was in progress. Norma Jean leaned forward and followed his pointing finger. It was the first sign she had made of consciousness since Rod had touched and kissed her. He took it as total forgiveness, and, in a way, it was just that, for Norma Jean was so happy to be reaching the ground and safety again that she would have made friends with the devil.
Rod taxied the plane almost to the cabin door. When he and Norma Jean alighted, there was a group of people waiting to greet them. Most of them were older than Rod, some even in their middle years.
Then, it has been reported by the girl to her therapist, there were several hours of total confusion during which she remembered very little. Norma Jean does recall that upon reaching the ground, she felt giddily happy. She laughed, even hung closely to Rod Baker's arm. She had no explanation for this feeling except to say that she was "so relieved to have gotten away from the heights."
The party was livelier than anything Norma Jean had imagined possible. All of the people seemed to be very wealthy. She was never able to determine quite how they fitted into the eighteen-year-old Rod Baker's life, but it was apparent that they were all friends of some long standing. There was a great deal of drinking and almost every nook and corner of the cabin contained couples involved in deep petting. Once, when Norma Jean accidentally walked into a bedroom, she unexpectedly came upon a couple who were involved in an act of intercourse. They hardly noticed her, but she shut the door quickly and left the room.
Rod drank a great deal. Soon he was very drunk. And Norma Jean, contrary to anything previously in her life, drank too. And the giddiness returned. And the flare of affection for Rod Baker returned too.
By midnight, everyone at the party was very drunk. There developed then an impromptu dance by two girls whose only talent seemed to be the dismissal of their clothing as they danced around the room. Soon both the girls were naked. Then two men stepped forward and swept them out of the room, heading, Norma Jean guessed, for the bedrooms at the back of the cabin.
"You feel like dancing?" Rod suddenly asked, slurring the words drunkenly and looking into Norma Jean's face.
"I don't feel anything," she replied. Her voice showed the signs of drink, apprehension, and the relief she had experienced upon arriving at the cabin.
"Well then, come on feel something. With me." Rod gripped her forearm and urged her onto the front porch.
The cool night air struck Norma Jean's face, but it did not sober her. And when Rod urged her off the porch and in the direction of the beach and lake that rested at the bottom of the hill that the cabin fronted, Norma Jean broke into her giddy, almost hysterical laughter again.
Soon Norma Jean's feet sunk deeply into sand. She heard the lap of water against the shore. She heard crickets and other night sounds. And she saw the glistening water far from the shore where moon rays struck it and sliced it. She felt strange, distant, remote from everything, and she felt happy, too strangely happy, all of it made up from the complexities that had that night overwhelmed her.
Norma Jean felt Rod's eyes on her body. The moon made a kind of frame around her, and she knew that her body was presented in the very best possible way, that she looked as seductive as the dress she wore.
"Come here," Rod said.
Norma Jean walked over to him.
"You're a crazy kid, you know," he said.
"I guess I am," she answered, staring straight into his eyes.
"Mixed up like," Rod continued. "You go from one thing to another thing hating the heights and freezing me out, then laughing like a nut and liking me. What gives anyway?"
"I don't know," she said. "What does give?"
"This for a starter," he replied.
Both Rod's hands closed around Norma Jean's waist. Then he pulled her close. She felt her breasts touch his chest, her waist smack against his, her breath mixing with the alcoholic odor of his breath. And she did not care. Not about anything. Her presence, the crazy airplane ride, the liquor everything, crashed upon her and jabbered her mind and emotions into a turmoil; it was as if she had been greatly changed, would never again be the same girl she had been only hours earlier.
"Are you ready to kiss me properly now?" Rod asked.
"More than ready," she brazenly replied.
Rod looked surprised. But Norma Jean could see his faint smile in the moonlight. It made her want to be even more daring, to show that she could be as loose and dirty as any girl Rod had ever known.
"And I'm ready for something else, too," she said huskily, bringing her hands to Rod's shoulders and pinching his muscles with the tips of her fingers.
"Oh, yeah," he said softly.
"Yeah," she answered, saying it like the answer to a challenge.
Rod started to pull her close, but Norma Jean took a quick step backwards. And then she did the most amazing thing. She unzipped the side of her dress, shrugged the straps from her shoulders, and for a moment stood before the eighteen-year-old boy, the top of her dress hanging at her waist and her bra-encased breasts heaving with the breathing that now issued from her delightful body.
"Man, you really are crazy," Rod Baker said. "Good crazy."
"Crazier than you think," Norma Jean said.
Quickly she shimmied her dress to her feet and stepped out of it. Then she raised and smiled at the boy again, standing revealed to him in nothing but a strapless bra, half-slip, nylons and high-heeled shoes.
A gasp of appreciation escaped from the boy's lips. Then he gasped again as Norma Jean dismissed the remainder of her clothing. But then there was no time or element that could produce further sounds until they were to be made up of hard pumping love-sounds.
Norma Jean, acting upon some emotion that will never be clear, suddenly played the part of a mature, sexually-sophisticated woman. She dashed toward Rod, crushed her naked body against him then raised her hands and loosened his collar and tie.
"Get rid of all that," she whispered.
Rod shook his head unbelievingly. Then he, too, quickly attained nudity.
Their bodies made a hard, smacking sound when they crashed together in a desperate embrace. They kissed stickily, their tongues swooping and playing and darting deeply. And their hands implored the passions that their kisses created. Norma Jean's fingers worked over the small of Rod's bare back. His pinched at her buttocks, fought between their bodies and caressed at her large, now-hard breasts.
Very soon, they stumbled away from the shoreline to a group of bushes that veiled the back part of the beach. Then they slumped to the beach and stretched long together in a new embrace. And finally, Norma Jean, acting as if love-making was a regular occurrence in her life, rolled to her back and stretched her arms out to Rod.
He lowered between the double V of arms and legs. He snuggled close, then closer, then thrust forward with all his might. Norma Jean cried out, but the sound was made to seem happy and welcoming, for her hips immediately began a hard, rhythmic pumping to the tune of Rod's downward thrust and withdrawal. Her stomach muscles tightened and rolled in waves from just below her breasts until they were lost at the action their unity had made. And her hard nipples bloated larger, harder, more cracked, as if they were berries bulging with sweet juices that would soon be uncontainable.
Rod Baker was an excited lover. Overly excited, probably made that way by the unexpected aggressiveness of Norma Jean. He quickly finished his trip to the end of current passion it was not the end for the girl. As he gasped, then collapsed upon her moist, bare body, her hips continued to churn, to thrust and whirl, and her throat continued to issue the small, harsh sounds of approaching climax. She was not to know this thrill, however. Not until hours later when she and Rod, fully clothed again, excused themselves from the party group and moved to an upstairs bedroom. Then Norma Jean, fifteen and previously unsullied, knew her response knew the confusion of her mixed-up life in a single, body-exiting stream of excitement.
Norma Jean was not afraid of heights during the airplane ride home. It was as if this fear had been greatly diminished. But her life had been changed, had been brought to a loss of virginity and a crossroads of promiscuity because of a mother's desires and ambitions.
"We cannot say for sure, of course," said Norma Jean's therapist, "but I would venture to say that had there not been mother-permissiveness in this case, we would not have had the problems of a young girl making love to an overly-sophisticated boy, from which she jumped off and into the deep water of a regularly wayward life."
And what about the fear of heights? All these conflicts that Norma Jean experienced on the way to the cabin party?
"Oddly enough, the boy, Rod Baker, was right in a way," explained the doctor. "Height fear sometimes does identify frigidity in women, but this is not necessarily so in this case or other cases. It seems that for the girl this was a part of her confusion that night. And it was a confusion created by the mother who actually coerced her child into a situation where her sexuality was threatened."