Foreword
No man or woman is ever completely safe from his or her own secret desires. These are the things that his whole life has focused on, that have some sort of meaning after all other meanings are gone. And, good or bad, under the right circumstances any individual can give in to his desires.
This book is about the type of "warped" sexual hang-up that a single lady can become enmeshed in if the conditions are right. She may resist, as Mary does. She may seek alternatives, as Mary does. But it would seem that nothing can change her destiny.
The individual is the sum of his life's experience. The poison that is fed to him in the form of ridiculous and stupid and plainly false knowledge shapes him for what is to happen more than the events which eventually do take place.
There is a normal attraction of maturity for immaturity. The air of innocence displaces the threat of competition or failure. The teacher may teach - not do - because the threat of competition is too much to handle. And if the teaching is sexual, if the action is between young, lusty boys and physically mature women, is it so surprising?
As Mary discovers in this book, children are bursting with sexual sap, it is like a tree growing in Spring. The vigor and the desire are at their peak in adolescents. Coitus, fellatio, analism, group sex: all are normal manifestations of the natural sex desire of children. And when that desire is frustrated, the child is warped.
Mary, in this novel, is the result of a frustrated childhood. She had been conditioned against enjoying a full, satisfying sex life. The result is a fatal chink in her armor and she cannot resist the seductive pressures of the time and place portrayed in this story. But this is not to say that the children in this book represent normality. Abnormality begets further abnormality. Perhaps they are the other side of the see-saw. What the children are is counterpoint to what Mary is - or was. They attract and subdue each other. It is this way in life as well as in fiction.
This novel is not a suggestion that everyone - or even anyone - should begin to act out his or her sexual fantasies. It is, rather, an impeachment of a system that seems to offer nothing better to its many victims.
Sexual activity is natural and joyful. Sexually healthy people are more often mentally healthy than people who have sexual problems. Any psychiatric worker can prove this. Whole schools of practical psychology are based on the idea that the root of most psychological problems is a sexual problem.
There is no hard and fast answer. Sex is here - to stay. The only question to be answered is whether or not it will be a constructive or destructive tenure.
It is our hope that sexually candid novels about sexual problems will prove to be wholly and unquestionably constructive.
THE PUBLISHER