Chapter 4
Emily L. had married at the age of eighteen. During the next twenty years she followed her husband from Army base to Army base across the nation and overseas. Her parents had been wealthy and socially prominent and when their daughter married a common soldier, who they knew would spend his whole life in the Army, Emily was disinherited.
She never regretted her decision. In spite of the hardships, in spite of the long separations, she had lived a happy life, and she still loved her husband.
He was now Master Sargeant John L., one of the highest ranks an enlisted man can reach. The crisis in their life began when he was assigned to a large Army base in New England. Part of his new duties involved courier work and he was away from her about two weeks of each month.
During those days, Emily, now thirty-eight, began to think very seriously about her past life. Often, she sat for hours trying to recall incidents and conversations from then-past experiences together. She also thought a lot about her childhood and her parents, now old and feeble.
As a child, Emily had received an excellent education plus all of the "cultural" extras that a rich girl is bound to get. Her parents had given her music lessons, language lessons, and dance lessons for many years. Probably, her most profound disappointment in her marriage was that her husband had absolutely no interest in either music or dancing or literature. While thinking about her past, Emily began to experience an emptiness as she thought of the many concerts and plays her parents had sent her to.
During my interview with her, she described her feelings to me:
"I would sit there, often weeping, and snatches of music from old concerts and bits of dialogue from old plays would come into my mind. I cannot really describe why, after twenty years of having nothing to do with such things, I should suddenly be almost overwhelmed by them. And overwhelmed is the right word. It was almost a sexual feeling. It was as if my body needed cultural events like a woman who had been in prison for twenty years needs the sexual power of a man when she is released.
"I had to fill that vacuum, quickly, at almost any cost."
There was a small club of Army wives on the base which attempted to hold various cultural events. Emily contacted them and joined. The club would meet once a week to discuss a current book, or they would go into Boston to hear a concert. When her husband came back from courier duty and heard about her new venture, he laughed and made fun of it. But he did not prevent her from going to the club meetings or the events. For that, at least, she was extremely thankful. The moment, however, she began taking an interest in cultural affairs, their sexual relations suffered. Neither of them could understand it. The one overwhelming fact of their marriage was that after all that time, they still took great pleasure in each other's bodies.
Emily described the change which played a large part in her subsequent indescretion with a child less than half her age.
"It happened so suddenly. In one night our bodies became cold to each other. John came into bed and slipped his hand under my pajama top, firmly holding my breast. His hand was not feverish as it usually was when it stroked my breast. I began to kiss him. But nothing happened. There was no change in my feelings. It was as if my lips were pressing against a piece of wood rather than his surging maleness. I became frantic and my lips reflected it. Quickly, I spread my legs, begging him to come into me, to make me once more feel that rush of hot seed as it was injected by a stiffened flesh.
"But he did not enter me. We just lay there, looking at each other, our eyes reflecting our torment. Then he left the bed and went into the bedroom to drink. I followed him and curled at his feet, trying to apologize. But there was nothing to apologize for. It was the fault of both of us. Something had snapped. Something had gone out of our life. Neither of us knew whether it was a permanent affair or one of those temporary states which many married people go through."
When I asked Emily if she tried various aids to help their sexual relations along, she replied:
"Yes, for a while I did. I bathed him in warm water, trying to arouse him. I delicately scented the most precious part of my anatomy, and while he was lying in bed, I proceeded to rub his lips and face with it, hoping to transfer my body heat into his mouth, hoping to bring forth his tongue and let it enter the hidden openings. But nothing happened. I knew it was somehow connected with my sudden revival of interest in music and the arts. John probably believed, subconsciously, that I had betrayed him." The next day, after her attempt to arouse them both through various aids, she met Danny, the fifteen year old boy who was to have such an important part to play.
It happened at one of the club meetings. Emily arrived expecting the meeting to be just another get-together that would discuss the forthcoming cultural events. Instead, the recording secretary of the club announced that Danny, the son of an officer at the base and a piano prodigy, had agreed to play for them.
The women were quite enthused because they knew that the boy had already performed several concerts and had been received by critical acclaim by some of America's most outstanding musical commentators.
They held their breath as he sat down at the piano. Danny was a tall, thin boy with long flowing hair. His face was delicate and beautiful. His skin was white and the black hair and eyebrows made a firm contrast. He began to play. The women had never heard such playing before. Danny captured them, body and soul. They forced him to play encore after encore until the boy was exhausted.
But none of the women fell under the boy's spell as quickly and as totally as Emily. She could scarcely breathe as he played, the magic of his fingers seemed to constrict her chest muscles. She described that first meeting months after it happened, but the drama of the situation was not diluted by the passage of time:
"Danny's music seemed to enter into my body directly rather than the usual course of through the ears. Every pore in my flesh opened to receive those wondrous sounds. My eyes were riveted on that classical, intense face, so immersed in the music that only his delicate nostrils moved.
"And then there were his fingers. Watching them, I was only a few feet away, my eyes seemed to be glued to their movement. Never have I seen such hands, tender yet strong, thin yet steely, passionate but schooled in discipline.
"My thoughts soon went away from the beauty of his music. As his fingers darted up and back on the keyboard, I wanted them to dart up and back on me. As I was sitting there, I had what can only be called a hallucination.
"It was this: I was lying naked on a marble floor, bound hand and foot. Danny came in and pulled a piano stool next to my body as if I was a piano. I kept calling to him that I was a person and not a musical instrument but loud applause from an unseen audience drowned out my voice. Then he began to play on me. His hands glided up and down my naked flesh. I could feel the tips of hi! fingers, like tiny erotic knives, digging into me.
"A finger touched my nipple and I shivered. Another finger grazed my thighs and momentarily lost itself in that triangle of hair nestled between them.
"Then the piece was over and I broke out of that insane vision to see Danny standing by the piano, bowing, and smiling at me. Did he know, I thought to myself. Had he any idea of my thoughts?"
At home after his brief and informal concert, Emily could think of nothing but the boy. She had to meet him. She had to talk to him. Her husband was leaving for another courier trip and she knew that would be her chance.
The day after her husband left she began to inquire where Danny lived. Once having obtained the address, she began to watch the house to see where and when he would be home alone. Emily was so intrigued by the child that she did not even realize she was acting like a thief, watching his house from behind parked automobiles.
Danny was home alone every day from three to five. She could hear him practicing the piano even out on the street. One afternoon, at about four, she walked to the front door of his house and rang the bell. Emily described her feelings at that moment:
"I didn't really know why I was there. Surely, the idea of sex was not uppermost in my mind. Neither was the idea of listening to him play. All that I knew was that I had to see him and to speak to him."
I asked her whether she believed a misplaced maternal instinct had any role in her visit.
"Maybe, of course, I never really had any desire for children. But I can't be sure that a repressed maternal instinct did not enter into it. I really don't know."
Danny answered the door. Emily just stood there, not saying a word, hoping the boy would recognize her from the club concert. He looked at her for a long while. He knew he had seen her before but could not place the exact day. Drawing closer to the boy, Emily told him that she had been present at the concert and she wanted to talk to him for a few minutes about music. Danny opened the door wide and ushered her in. They went into the living room and sat down facing each other.
Events then began to happen at a dizzying pace. Emily describes what happened:
"We faced each other. Not a word was said. His face, that beautiful child-like face reflected both fear and aniticpation. He knew in his soul that something was about to happen. I walked over to him and took his hand. I bent down beside him and looked closely at those marvelous fingers. The boy began to quiver, not very much, but enough to send darts of passion coursing through my body. For the first time I spoke to him in a voice of love. I told him that I was not there to cause pain but to bring pleasure. Those words came out of my mouth without even thinking. I seemed to be possessed by another intelligence which had somehow invaded my psyche and was taking over.
"My lips pressed against his fingers. I kissed each of them, then took them one by one into my mouth and sucked them with fevered gulps.
"He closed his eyes. I moved closer and kissed his shut eyelids, trying to transfer my growing passion into his young, innocent body. I could hear him playing in my subconscious even though I knew, intellectually, that he was besides me and not at the piano.
"I opened my dress and pushed his fingers inside. Those delicate but powerful instruments were like a caged bird underneath the fabric until they found my breasts. His fingers touched the naked flesh and I cried out in indescribable joy. His fingers pushed against the nipples, putting all of his pent-up adolescent lust into them. The fingers became hot and wet as they struggled against my white breasts, trying to extract every ounce of music from the erect nipples.
"Now his body was shaking uncontrollably. I pushed my hands between his legs and opened his pants with such a fury that a button ripped off and bounced once or twice on the rug before lying there, a mute testament to my passion.
"Then his young maleness was before me. I cried out that it was beautiful, and that the child's talents were a gift from God. Danny's eyes were still closed, but his angellic face had been dappled by a slight flush.
"Slowly, quivering, his maleness asserted itself, moving toward me, almost singing its song of awakening lust. I parted my lips, eagerly, waiting, always waiting for it as it inched its way toward me. Then my tongue flicked out like a snake. A low, moaning sound came from the depths of his soul. Quickly I pounced on it. Quickly I opened my mouth to receive the secret of his talent. It was within me. I almost fainted from joy. My lips played a sonata on the struggling, muscular weapon and it darted to and fro, about my ivory teeth.
"A moment later, it grew to a size that almost suffocated me. And, then, like a rush of notes from the most stirring symphony, the child's first seed poured into me, drenching my lips and staining my teeth with that wondrous heated liquid. Danny lay quivering on the chair, his eyes filled with tears.
"The moment was too sublime. No words could be said. I gathered my purse and left, silently and quickly. He was still weeping when I closed the door behind me."
For the next two days Emily could think of nothing else but the child's surging passion, brought to a delicate fruition by her lips. She was also afraid that the boy had become frightened by her aggressiveness and would no longer want to see her.
During those two days, between her first and second encounter with Danny, all thoughts of her husband went out of her mind. Her sexual delight in Danny also translated itself into a more profound appreciation of music, and she spent many hours in the record section of the base library, listening to music that she had not heard in years and was now reacquainting herself with. But the drive to see the child again was overwhelming. He had become the center of her life. He had become the one ingredient in her life which seemed to offer her a remakable intellectual and cultural renaissance.
Her next visit to Danny is described below in her own words:
"He opened the door and let me in without a word. He was in the midst of practicing so I waited, listening to the divine sounds his fingers elicited from the keys. His eyes shone as he bent over the piano, utterly transported into a world that only genius could know. I thanked God for having the opportunity to listen to his playing once again.
"Then he finished and shyly taking my hand, led me into the bedroom. We lay on the bed together and the child began to undress me. I could hear his heavy breathing as he peeled garment after garment off my willing body, until I lay there for his total enjoyment.
"When he finished, I undressed him, covering his young, virgin body with a series of kisses. Then, we were side by side, our flesh screaming for each other. He shyly reached his hand between my legs and stroked my flower with those wondrous fingers. I encouraged him and soon he grew more daring. His thin, delicate lips grazed the insides of my thighs. Closer and closer they moved to the flower, until, in one beautiful movement, they were pressed against the lips of my opening. His mouth and my source of womanhood were joined in what seemed an eternal embrace. I called to him softly to kiss me there and his tongue entered, ever so gently, with enough force however to cause little spears of lust shooting up and down the length of my body.
"And then, before my very eyes, the child turned into a man. The delicate prodigy shed his past and grew into a vigorous, questing male with only one purpose; to enter me and crush me. Roughly, his hands pushed my thighs apart until my opening was lying exposed for him to take. He climbed on me and in one incredible moment, impaled me with his now erect maleness, driving me deep into the soft bed, making my body sing with the force and beauty of the penetration. Deeper and deeper his maleness went-into the depths of my body, bringing out of my flesh the most exquisite moans of total subjection. He was a raving beast then, his teeth searching out the most vulnerable part of my neck and drawing blood at the same time his organ performed its task.
"Then, I heard a gasp, and a second later my whole body shook with the force of the seed which poured into me and left me a gasping woman on the bed, my eyes wide with the glory of his flesh."
A most remarkable portrait of a most remarkable relationship. After this second encounter, they met every day. Their erotic urges often lapsed into perversion but the beauty and the innocence of their love cannot be disputed.
But, the inevitable occurred. Her husband returned from the courier mission and upon discovering that his wife was acting quite strangely, followed her one afternoon. He burst into the house while the woman and the boy were locked in an embrace. The Sargeant, then and there, beat his wife unmercilessly, and left her, a bruised and bleeding body, on the bedroom floor. The child was not harmed.
Her husband got drunk that night and in his anguish, punched an officer on the base. Because of his excellent record and because of the fact that he was drunk, they did not court-martial him. But they demoted him from Master Sargeant to Corporal. This sudden fall, this sudden crisis in her husband's life, seemed to act as a cooling balm on his wife. Emily dropped the boy. She was horrified that she had been the cause of her husband's difficulty because she knew that his whole life was the Army. Begging forgiveness, she asked to return to her husband. He consented.
In the months that followed, their relationship was often precarious. But Emily made a special effort to mend the breach between them and to try and make up for her infidelity. Gradually, the old ties of love and affection were reestablished.
As for the child, he was too terrified by the beatings he had witnessed to ever try to establish contact again. The secret longings that still remained in Emily's psyche will probably never be rooted out. But she has chosen to repress them for the sake of her husband's career. For that, we can only admire her.