Chapter 11
I didn't want to carry on that line of conversation much longer, so I excused myself and headed for the john. While I was in there, I paused to reflect that this club was a pretty damn sadistic outfit. The type of initiation, the showing of the movies afterward-that was just downright sadistic.
But I guessed the reason why. This club was run by the seniors, by Don Hammer and Roy Burchard and company. The juniors just went along with everything, while we sophs were given next to no say in what went on. And I suppose by the time you're a senior and have belonged for three years, good old normal sex can get pretty dull. After all, you've had access to more girls than you could normally take on in a single week, or maybe a month. It's just too much of a good thing.
And so the senior members get jaded by just sleeping around. That's kid stuff to them. They're bored with plain ordinary sex.
So they start fooling around with refinements and novelties. They spend a lot of their time reading the club's pornographic books, brought back from Europe by members who go abroad for a summer, and they get their ideas from that. Instead of just making a girl, they beat her up, or take her on two at a time, or do other things even worse. Sadistic things. They figure out new and complicated settings-submerged in a bathtub, maybe, or hanging by your heels. They watch dirty films. They humiliate the new members by showing them films of the initiation. Tonight must have been a regular old picnic for them, what with Bea Mannheim being a virgin.
And after graduation? Well, by that time they've got nicely developed perverse tastes. Maybe they dabble in a bit of homosexuality, or some other perversion. They've been highly educated, sexually speaking. And isn't that why we go to college-to get educated?
I took a long look in the mirror and saw myself as an aging pervert of thirty or so, and I tell you, it sickened me. I pictured myself balding, with sly uptilted eyebrows and the dark circles of debauchery round my eyes, and a cynical jaded smirk on my face. It was one hell of an image. I closed my eyes and jabbed the balls of my thumbs into them, massaging them, and when I opened my eyes again my own familiar not-very-sophisticated-looking face peered back. That was a relief. But I made up my mind right then and there not to let myself get drawn into all the curious byways of sex that would be offered to me. That way lay perversion. I wanted to stay normal.
Normal. As if it were normal to wander around naked in a houseful of other naked people, who made love whenever the mood seized them.
I heard someone knocking on the bathroom door, and a female voice yelled, "For crissake, hurry up and get out of there!"
"Keep your pants on," I automatically, without realizing it was a pointless thing to say. "I'm com-mg.
I opened the door and Lois Reznik went rushing past me like a whirlwind. She made it as far as the sink and then heaved up royally. I closed the door behind her, cutting off the sounds of retching and upchucking.
Jack Beale was standing just outside, shaking his shaggy head. "I told the dope she'd lose her supper, but she wouldn't listen."
"What was she doing?"
"Mixing her drinks. Gin and scotch and rum and lord knows what else. Hell of a. way to get drunk."
I drifted on through the clubhouse, feeling like a disembodied figure. Flesh everywhere, sweating panting heaving flesh. Bare buttocks quivering across the room, full breasts swinging pendulously in the corner, thighs and hips and shoulders everywhere. Sally Marshall lying drunk on the floor with her head in Lome Byris' lap, singing bawdy songs and waving her glass around. Ellis Dill and Zelda Hughes wrapped into a pretzel on the couch. Hal Sharp, serious-minded and intent, serious-mindedly and intently making it with Sarah Rawlins on the kitchen floor. Don Hammer quietly helping himself to some aphrodisiac or other to get himself ready for another round.
Quite a scene, all right. Nero's orgies couldn't have been much worse. And Nero didn't have a cameraman on hand. We did. Ted Felks, who had been very active earlier in the evening, was quietly filming the whole thing. And Ned Carter crouched near the couch with a tape recorder, holding up the microphone to record for posterity Zelda Hughes' grunts of animal pleasure as Dill brought her to a peak of satisfaction.
Helene Wallace crossed in front of me. She had been upstairs earlier with Les Haberman, and now I noticed purplish bruise marks on her plump buttocks. The skin was red, too, as though she'd been spanked. As I watched, Roy Burchard came up to her and fetched her a lusty swat on the rear. She seemed to tingle with delight, and practically threw herself at him.
I found Chuck standing at my elbow again. "She looks like she's had a strenuous night," I said.
He nodded. "Haberman was letting her have it with the hose upstairs."
"Doesn't she mind?"
"Loves it. Masochist." Chuck shook his head. "First time I made Helene was in my freshman year. Know how? I wasn't even trying. We were walking in the park on a date, and I pinched her behind, just for fun. Guess I pinched her a little too hard or something, because it really plugged her in. She dragged me under a bush and damn near raped me."
I shuddered. I had thought such things were for the textbooks only. But then I realized we were rewriting the textbooks right here.
Lois Reznik had finished heaving now. She was sitting in a corner, looking white and sick. Bea Mannheim, the ex-virgin, was lying near her, out cold. Charley Mason was kneeling over her, trying to bring her to, but she was stony drunk.
Marge came weaving up to me. She'd had quite a load too. Her breath smelled of half a dozen different things. She held me by the shoulders to steady herself, and said in a wobbly voice, "I'm angry at you."
"What for?"
"You've been ignoring me."
"I've been busy," I said.
"You had plenty of time for me once. But now I've got to share you with a dozen other girls."
"And I've got to share you too," I pointed out. "Anyway, it isn't like we were married or anything. We just had one date."
"Hell with that. Come upstairs with me now or I'm gonna be sore at you."
I wasn't going to argue with her about it. Anyway, I was just starting to feel ready for another round. So I let Marge drag me up the stairs and into one of the bedrooms on the upper floor. Two people happened to be occupying the first bedroom we went into, but I don't know who they were, because what they were doing so shocked me that I backed right out again, pulling Marge with me. I was still a small-town boy at heart, I guess.
We went into the adjoining room and threw ourselves down, and Marge pulled me over on top of her so my body was pillowed on her softness, and I felt the hard bones of her hips pressing against my hip-bones, and the soft bulks of her breasts spreading out against my chest. Then she wrapped herself around me like a carnivorous amoeba, and I thrust my tongue deep into her mouth, and we became one.
After that we must have gone to sleep in each other's arms. I woke up a lot later, and found myself still snuggled up with Marge.
The only thing I was wearing was my wrist watch. I looked at it. It said ten minutes to six.
I got up. Marge muttered something unintelligible and reached out for me, but quickly subsided back into sleep. I went tiptoeing out of the bedroom to have a look around.
The place looked, of course, as if a cyclone had hit it Cigarette ashes and empty glasses were everyplace, the couches were a mess, some of the chairs were turned over, books were scattered. Don Hammer, Ned Carter, and Ted Felks were the members who actually lived here fulltime, and I knew they had somebody come in once a week to clean the place up. I wondered what sort of ideas their cleaning-woman formed about the sort of things that went on at the weekend parties.
There were plenty of stragglers. Felks sat on the couch, awake and smoking a cigarette, looking down in a glassy-eyed kind of way at the sleeping form of Janet Bryce. He was stroking her breasts, but she was out like a light. He nodded sleepily to me as I appeared. I wondered how in hell anyone could smoke a cigarette at this hour.
"Morning."
"Morning," I said. "Corpses all over the place, huh?"
"Looks that way."
Bea Mannheim was still crumpled in the same corner she had been in five hours before. She was breathing, which relieved me. But she must have had an awful lot of alcohol in her system to be so stoned.
Ned Carter and Paula Garson were asleep on the couch. Lois Reznik lay face-down on the kitchen floor. Ellis Dill was curled up in an armchair.
"How come you're still up?" I asked Felks.
"Just never bothered to fall asleep."
"Did I miss anything after one o'clock?"
"Some dancing, that was all. Maybe you wouldn't have liked it. It was pretty raw stuff."
"Am I supposed to be a puritan?" I asked, a little miffed.
"I get the feeling you don't altogether enter into the spirit of our little group, Burnside. The dancers were Sally and Janet and Lome Byris. They did some fancy stunts." Felks closed his eyes, remembering. "That Byris. If I didn't know better, I'd say he was a fairy, he dances so I started to reply, but I saw that Felks had slipped off into sleep on his final word. Shrugging, I moved on, looking around the place. Going to a front window, I peered out. Gray dawn was rising. The streets looked misty. Nobody was out there.
I didn't feel sleepy at all, not after having caught three or four hours of solid shut-eye. Going back upstairs, I looked in on Marge-she was still in dreamland, curled up now in a fetal position with her thumb in her mouth, for gosh sakes-and went on into the bedroom where I had parked my clothes so many hours before. Don Hammer and Claire Reynolds were occupying the bed in that room, and they were asleep. I moved around quietly, trying to get dressed without waking them up. But as I started to pull my trousers on I got the impression I was being watched, and I glanced around to see Claire looking at me and grinning.
"Good morning," she whispered.
"Morning."
"Leaving?"
"Why not?"
"Come to bed," she said. "I feel like having some fun, and Don's too drunk to wake up."
I shook my head. "Go back to sleep."
She pouted. "Spoil sport!"
"Trouble with you is, you're too greedy." I zipped up my fly. "Haven't you had enough for one night, anyway?"
"I never have enough," she said with a smirk.
I didn't answer her. I had had enough debauchery for one night.
Maybe she had, too, whatever she said. Because by the time I finished dressing, she had gone back to sleep. I tiptoed downstairs, past all the huddled sleepers, and out into the morning. The air was cool and bracing, and Broadway was practically deserted, except for a few working people like the newsstand men busily getting ready for the sale of Sunday newspapers a couple of hours from now.
I was in a sort of philosophical mood as I took the bus back to 214th Street. I was wondering where all this was getting me, this frantic hugging and kissing and sleeping around. Was this what I really wanted? I tried to think back to the Jeff Burnside of the summer, the Jeff Burnside who had ridden that train down from Hudson telling himself that this was the year finally to make it with women. I had succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. Chiquita, Marge, Helen, Janet, Sarah, Paula, Claire, all in less than a month. And, if my virility held out, there were still seven more members I had access to, plus two other girls yet to be enrolled.
So I was really sowing my wild oats. Yet I felt subtly disappointed. I was like the man who had waited all his life to have a taste of hundred-year-old brandy, and who, when he finally got some, drank an entire fifth all at once and got sick.
That was sort of my position. I was getting an overdose of sex. But, I told myself, there could be worse fates.
What about the future, though? I wasn't going to be nineteen forever. Some day I was going to get married, and I would have the memory of all those orgies in the back of my mind. I realized that I would probably insist on marrying a virgin. Why? Because that was the only way I could be sure I'd be getting a girl who hadn't been had by fifteen or twenty other guys. I knew it was an inconsistent attitude for me to have, but nobody ever said you had to be consistent about your sex life.
So you see I was in a land of introverted mood when I reached the hotel. I let myself into my room and sank down on my unbroken bed, and thought about things for a while. Along toward seven, I got up and went into the kitchen and brewed some coffee. I didn't feel like sleeping at all.
Then I wrote that long-overdue letter to my folks. I told them about my classes, as best as I could-I guess I didn't pay much attention to my profs this year, having other things on my mind-and I mentioned that my social life was coming along okay, which was one hell of an understatement in my book. Then I added, casually-like, By the way, I'm seriously considering moving out of the dormitories and into one of the hotels in the neighborhood. The rent is about the same, and I'd be able to save money by cooking for myself. You see, I find dorm life quite stultifying; there is no privacy at all, people keep barging into my room at all hours of the day and night, and there is continual roistering. I feel that by moving out of such a noisy environment I would be able to study more satisfactorily.
After writing that sentence I stared at it for a long while, wondering where I had found the brass to write such a glib fib.
I had already decided to break the news slowly to my parents about living off-campus. Maybe in the next letter I would be considering it more seriously, and then-unless they howled real loud-in the letter after that I would tell them I had actually moved, and give them the address I had been living at all along. At least that way I would have one less he to keep up.
I finished up the letter with a few mushy sentiments, scribbled, Your son, Jeffrey at the bottom, sealed it, and stuck a stamp on it. So much for filial devotion, I thought. I carried the letter out to the mail chute near the elevator and dumped it in.
By this time morning was well under way, and it looked like by way of being a really nice morning. Too nice to spend in my room. I scooped up my Psych text and the Contemporary Civilization readings, and went downstairs and over to Riverside Park. I curled up there on the still-damp grass, and studied.
The sun was warm but mild. By the time I finished my Contemp Civ readings, it was past nine and the park was starting to fill up with young mothers out for Sunday strolls with their baby carriages. Just from force of habit I ogled them. Some of them were real lookers. They were twenty-two or twenty-three and even though they had kids they didn't look like wives yet, but like pretty young girls.
I wondered if I'd ever get married. I tried to picture myself, a successful doctor or writer of video scripts, and my wife going out for a Sunday stroll with the baby while I lounged around upstairs in my duplex apartment, sipping coffee, and reading the papers.
It wasn't a bad picture. The only thing missing was the face of the wife. I tried to picture myself married to Marge. It wouldn't be so bad, finding those knockers in your bed night after night, but eventually I was going to get bored with mere lumps of mammary flesh, and there wasn't much else to Marge than that.
Besides, it was going to be embarrassing to go to alumni reunions and such. "You know my wife Marge, don't you?" I might say to someone. "The former Marge Halloran, Chesley '65."
"Sure I know her," almost anyone might reply. "I made her in the spring of '63-or was it the fall of '62, Marge? I'm starting to forget little details. But we did it in the back of my dad's '59 Chevy, that much I remember-"
That would be a hell of a thing.
My thoughts rambled by a natural progression to Carol West. She would make a nice wife for somebody. Clean and well turned out and intelligent and studious, and without any sordid past to haunt you. I pictured Carol and me out for a stroll on West End Avenue on a Sunday, pushing a big baby carriage. Twins, yet. "Dr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Burnside." I liked the sound of that. "Mrs. Carol Burnside." That had a nice ring to it, too.
Then I remembered that a) I had mortally offended Carol and wouldn't even be able to get her vote for dogcatcher, let alone her signature on a marriage license application, and b) I hardly knew her and had never dated her, and c) that Chuck Gordon was eventually going to seduce her and ruin her life for her.
The three thoughts all at once made me a little sick. My private fantasy session ended abruptly. I was back in the real world.
I looked down at the open textbook. My head started to ache. All of a sudden I felt lousy all over.