Chapter 18

Dr. Edd shot a million and a half units into my rump and said for all intents and purposes I was cured. Another shot in a week would simply be "insurance." Mother was terribly relieved.

Friday night came and I wore a taffeta minidress, and no bra, but it didn't matter since I had to wear a slip with it and taffeta is so stiff and rustly the movement of my breasts didn't show very much.

David took me to a good steak restaurant and spent fifteen dollars on the meal alone. But it was wasted on me because I was contemptuous of him for spending that much in an attempt to "bribe" me not just to obligate me to give him sex later (that's always his prime unconscious motive) but to show me how good the square life is in contrast to the "grubby" hippie life. He thought money was the difference.

We argued all during the dinner: "Christ, Juli, isn't it better to have things than not to have things?"

"Not if you don't need things! Why do you 'Need' a big house, a big car, all kinds of gadgets? Will you live longer? Will you have more friends? Will you sleep any better? No! You'll probably worry and work yourself to death twenty years before your time!"

"I don't know ... do poor people live any longer than rich people?"

"No, not if they eat themselves up with envy and don't know enough to eat right and always try to imitate the 'upper' classes. But if they stop trying to join the rat race, and don't let all the lies get to them, and resist the social pressure to be like the Joneses and buy, buy, buy! and concentrate on the really important things in life...."

And so on it went ... into race relations, the wars, the economics of everything, personal values and morals....

There was even an argument about my hair. David said, "Hey, you need another dye job. Brown roots showing." He snickered. He had scored a point for his side, he thought.

"I'm through coloring my hair. It's a stupid, artificial thing to do. I'm letting it grow out."

"That'll look pretty funny for a year or two." He laughed. He thought I was kidding.

"Don't worry. You won't have to see it."

"Hey ... you serious?"

"Serious."

"But " He grinned and retreated. "Naw, you're not!" Then he changed the subject.

We went to a show, "A Man For All Seasons," and David squirmed and fidgeted through it. He had asked me what I wanted to see, stupid man, and I had chosen "Seasons." He didn't like it because it was "too deep" and didn't have any girls in bikinis and bathtubs.

Then came the drive home more arguing and the attempt at petting on his part when we stopped before the house.

His hand on my thigh just under my dress, his after shave reeking in the car, his minty breath puffing at me ... I had spotted the furtive little move of his hand to his mouth with the mint as we emerged from the show ... he obeyed society's dictum: Thou Shalt Not Smell like An Animal, even if we do have a body, because a body is dirty and evil, and a natural odor is a Terrible Thing.

Which is not to say a person shouldn't be clean! But after you're clean to add a lot of gunk...

He tried to kiss me. I avoided his mouth. "What's the matter, Juli? You had a good time, didn't you?"

"I wasn't bored."

"We went to see the show you wanted to see." Implication you got your way, now you owe me a payoff in sex time for things to go my way!

I knew he would fume and argue and needle me for an hour unless I let him do a few things. I had before often enough, why not now? I asked, "David, why do you have to buy sex, and bully to get it, and pressure to get it ... ? I keep wondering ... can't you ... don't you know any girls who like you for yourself enough, and like sex enough, to do it without a big operation like this?"

"Sure! What do you mean? You like sex." He was confused.

"Yes, honest sex, not the kind that is a payoff."

"Well, I don't know any hippie girls who give it away. You try taking a girl out on a date and not spending any money on her. Not around here you don't. They get all fixed up and they expect a guy to lay out twenty bucks. The pretty ones. Who wants to drag along a dog?"

"A lot of girls prefer a quiet, walking date, or something like that."

"That's what they say!" He was resentful and surly. I couldn't blame him. Most girls are brought up in the system the middle-class sex bag within the possessions bag within the status bag. And most boys grow up accepting the system it was self-perpetuating and hate it but don't rebel. By the time they are sixteen or eighteen most of them are pussy-whipped. It is all so sick and depressing.

The truth is, David is such an up-tight square, such a sniggering jerk in so many ways, that no non-conformist girl, the kind who reject the system consciously or unconsciously, will look at him.

I had been moving farther and farther into non-conformity and had left David far behind.

But he wasn't going to be diverted by put-downs or discussion. He had paid for kisses, feels and anything else he could get, and he wasn't going to be denied.

His clammy, nervous hand came to my inner thigh, again, and this time it slid up to my panties and cupped my mound. His middle finger pressed the thin pink nylon into the lips of my vagina. My clitoris was touched and came alive in spite of my dislike of him.

David kissed at me again and I let it happen. His tongue fluttered in my mouth and I liked it ... my body liked it ... and he was only in my mind a male body to be used for sexual relief. Sex with David, I knew, wouldn't have the added emotional impact and completeness of sex with someone I loved, especially with Owl, but it would be good, nevertheless. I knew he could satisfy me and I was willing to indulge ... more as a diversion and relief from life-with-mother than anything else ... and take the pleasure that he offered. Why not? It was something to do.

I put my hand on his pants front and felt the size of his big, fat penis. I began to turn on. He pushed his hand under my panties to my belly and worked a finger down through my pubic hair to my lips, and into the slippery sensitive flesh. His finger buried itself in my vagina and then withdrew to slither over my button.

My legs opened more and I cooperated in the long kiss. I slipped a little lower on the car seat. My nostrils flared as I sucked air through them.

Then the house porch light came on and mother came out and started down the walk toward us.

David groaned and muttered, "Son of a bitch!"

I straightened up and agreed with him. She had no right to interfere!

But mother surprised us. She peered into the dark interior at us and said, "Come inside, David. You two can talk in the living room. I only stayed up till now to make sure Juli got home safely. Come inside." She smiled and went back into the house.

David said, "Huh! She never did that before!"

"She wants to keep me here. She's willing to overlook a few things for a while to promote our 'romance'. "

"Swell. Let's go in."

So we went inside. Mother appeared in the hallway for a moment. "Make drinks if you want, kids. And there's all kinds of food in the refrigerator." She smiled at David. "Good night." And she disappeared into her bedroom.

I said to myself, softly, "My mother, the pimp."

"What? Hey, this is nice of her, isn't it? I could use a drink. Where do you keep the fixings?"

"Over there." I pointed, then went over myself and opened the dining room cupboard where she kept the gin bottle and poured stiff slugs into two glasses. "There's a 7-Up in the refrigerator." David got two bottles and we had a strong mixed drink apiece.

He said, as we settled down on the sofa, "I thought you were so down on drinking."

I was depressed. Owl and the tribe suddenly seemed a million miles away, a forever away. I had a sickening feeling I'd never see any of them again. "I figure I may as well get used to it." I drank deeply. A little neon sign lit up in my mind: self-destruction.

David drank, too, then put his glass on the coffee table and leaned close, put his arms around me, hand on my breasts the taffeta rustled and asked, "Can we make out?"

"Why not? That's what she wants. You could fuck me on her bed and she'd watch and smile and say, 'Well, if you young people intend to get married...'

"No kiddin'? You willing to marry me?"

"No, David. I'm only willing to have sex with you tonight. Now." I finished my drink fast. We kissed and pawed each other. A warm glow was spreading through me. "Let's go into my room."

He was more than willing.

I closed the door and said, "Let's see that big cock of yours."

"Hey ... " He grinned with embarrassment. "You're talking pretty dirty all of a sudden."

"Why not? Sex is dirty, isn't it?" My mind was beginning to feel fuzzy. "Let's get naked and fuck. Fuck. Fuck."

"Hey, Juli ... " He wasn't sure I meant it. He grinned as he found the reason for my changed behavior. "Hey, you're getting drunk!" He was delighted. I had fallen off my high and mighty perch.

I nodded and it made me dizzy. I opened the back of my minidress and awkwardly pulled it up and off. I threw it toward a chair. "Come on, David. Nakedsville. Fuck City." I winked and pulled off my slip. I did a bump and grind. I was like a thick piece of emotional ply board a sheet of gin-gaiety, a sheet of lust, a sheet of contempt, a sheet of rage, a sheet of despair all glued and pressured together.

David undressed quickly. Coat, shirt, tie, slacks, undershirt, underpants, shoes, socks. Naked. Penis sticking out like a pink and white cucumber. I stepped out of my panties and pointed to the bed.

He crawled onto the bed and took me into his arms as I joined him there.

I ignored what his hands did to my breasts. I examined his penis. There was a dewdrop of lubricating moisture at the tip. I pumped him and more came up. It was fatter than I remembered it. It was hot and very stiff. I put my thumb on the big vein on the side of it. Nothing happened.

David asked, "You want the light on?" The ceiling light was bright.

"Sure. I want to see you when you go down on me." H is embarrassed grin returned. "I've never ... you know ... "

"You're going to do it tonight or get out of here right now."

"Aw, come on now, Juli ... "

"I mean it." I pushed away from him. I opened my thighs wide. I pointed at my pussy. "Lick it!"

He stared at it. "Well...." He licked his lips. "If you'll do it to me, too."

"Maybe yes, maybe no. I won't promise." I stared him down.

"Christ, Juli "

"All right, get dressed!" I folded my arms across my chest.

He complained, "You've changed."

"Eat me or get out!" I glared at him. I hoped he wouldn't. I hoped he had that much manhood and guts left. Not because going down is so terrible. It isn't! But obeying is! In a situation like that, a master-slave situation, obeying is a terrible soul-destroying thing.

"Well ... okay ... for a minute."

He moved between my thighs. "What do I do?"

I cringed inside for him, and hated him and pitied him. I used my hands to pull my lips apart. "Use your tongue, stupid!"

He moved his head forward and hesitantly extended his tongue. His eyes turned up to see me watching, and he begged, "Don't look."

"Lick!"

He craned his neck, stuck out his tongue and barely touched me there. The contact galvanized me! A hot, electrifying thrill shot through me, far out of proportion to the actual physical act. It was mixed with huge gobs of power! triumph, mastery! My gaze was riveted on my pussy and his extended tongue. I whispered intensely, fiercely, "More!"

He moved closer, more of his tongue came into contact with my pink, wet, inner flesh. He licked. My clitoris surged to full size and firmness. My hips writhed. My fingertips became slippery from my secretions and I couldn't keep myself open to his tongue properly. I stopped trying and seized his head. "Get tight!" And I pulled his face his mouth against my pussy. I was aroused, weirdly turned on by his submission and my power over him. David wasn't a man in my eyes anymore. He wasn't even the David I had known. He was an utterly humiliated creature ... now only a mouth, only a thing to be used and manipulated for amusement and pleasure.

He resisted and tried to pull back, but I kept pulling his mouth up against me and I whispered, "Eat me! Do it! Eat cunt! Lick cunt! Do it! DO IT!"

He could easily have broken my hold on his head. He could have easily pulled away and slapped me. But he didn't. David let me pull his face tight into the hollow of my loins, up against my hair, and he capitulated with a small, muffled whining in his throat, and his tongue went into me like an intelligent eel and I came! The orgasm was so violent I almost screamed. The muscles in my arms stood out as I crushed him to me "Lick, lick, lick!" and he did! And he snorted and fought for air, but he liked it! He liked his role! He liked the put-down, the submission, the humiliation, the abandonment of manhood and self-respect!

Then I collapsed into the bed and released him. I closed my eyes and sighed deeply. I heard-felt him moving up beside me. I even heard him wipe his mouth. He asked quietly, "Did I do it right?"

I smiled. I owned a six-foot lap dog. "Yes, baby, you did it right." I patted his crew cut head.

He kept silent for a few minutes, content to stroke my breast and belly, while I recovered, while I decided what we would do next. I wondered if mother was in the hallway outside my door, listening. I didn't care.

"Will you do it for me?" Begging.

I sat up. His erection was as big and hard as before. I decided to taste him, to compare, out of curiosity. To hell with his pleasure. That was incidental to my knowledge. I pushed him onto his back and straddled his knees. I pumped his big, fat penis experimentally, wiped the secretions away with the palm of my other hand, and lowered my mouth to it.

It was much larger in my mouth than Owl's. I couldn't take as much. It gagged me more severely when I tried to force the bigger, rounder head into my throat.

I sucked it a moment, used various tongue techniques ... was aware of his gasping and tense muscles, his small coital thrusts ... until it bored me, then I lifted my head and looked at it and had an urge to bite it hard and see blood spurt instead of semen.

"Don't stop!" His face was mask-life, stiff with lust. His eyes begged. He was so close.

"Cool down, David! Just lie there for a minute!"

He obeyed.

"Finger me!"

He slipped a finger into me and began sliding it in and out.

"Gently!" He obeyed.

I felt my desire return slowly, building up to a want, to a need for another orgasm. "That's enough." I moved forward and poised over his still huge penis. It was the woman-superior position and it meant exactly that to both of us.

I held him in my hand under me, pointed it up, lowered to take the head of it, and then let my weight push it up onto me ... deep ... deep! I whispered to myself, "Oh, wow..." I looked at the wall, not at him, as I crouched and moved on him, on his meat. He was only hard meat. That's all he deserved to be.

I drove his meat deep with each plunge, deep and hard with each plunge to his pubic bone, and set the bed to quivering and squeaking in rhythm, the quaking sound known everywhere. Mother must have heard it!

The boiling honey sensation was claiming my guts, my entire body! I was panting, clutching his shoulders, slapping myself down on him, knowing from his reactions that he was close to going off, but knowing I was there, too ... I ground myself down, wishing he had just a little bit more, to reach the secret, sensitive place, as Owl did. But I made it anyway, and went crazy as he gripped my hips and jolted up into me and grunted and spurted and bowed his neck ... gritted his teeth...

When it was over I was still on him, feeling him shrink inside me, hating the idea of having to clean up, not because of the sperm as such, but because it was his sperm, and in a small way it was a victory for him over me. He didn't have to wipe and wash like I did. Damn men!

I was just easing off his body when I saw what I was doing. To myself. To him. Mostly to me. I said in a sort of low key voice, "Oh, no...."

"What's the matter?"

I didn't answer. I pressed my hand to myself, climbed off the bed, opened the door and went into the bathroom. I washed myself mechanically and realized with greater and greater clarity what had happened. I was becoming like my mother! a contemptuous man-hater! It didn't matter that I liked sex and she didn't. What mattered was that I had for a while accepted this life mother's life, mother's values and had lived them with David! I could have David for my husband. He wanted to be what he was. He had been reared for it ... emasculated for it. . . and was content.

I wasn't! I didn't want to be trapped in a life I hated with a man I hated and despised for not being a man. I didn't want to seek continual revenge on my man because he couldn't command my respect. I didn't want to dominate him ... mother him ... manage him! I didn't want that kind of hell because I knew the only escape was self-contempt and self-destruction ... the liquor scene ... the tranquilizer, sleeping pills, energizer drug scene ... the eventual divorce ... the hell of emptiness ... loneliness...

If I stayed with mother I would end like her.

It was so clear to me! So obvious!

I walked back to my room. David hadn't begun to get dressed. Awaiting orders. I no longer wished to even talk to him. He was such a painful thing to know ... now. I finally said, "Get dressed. Leave me alone."

"Sure." He was quiet, too. He knew something had changed but he couldn't face it consciously. Maybe he never would.

It was past one A. M.

When he had gone I put on a robe and went down the hall to mother's room. Light showed under her door. I knocked. She said, "Come in, dear."

She was sitting up in bed, leaning against two pillows. She was reading newspapers. She accumulated them for a week or more at the time, then "caught up." There was a tall glass on the bedside table with the dregs of a drink in it.

She waited for me to say something. She was smiling faintly, serene, confident. I knew I was going to shatter her again, crumble her, perhaps destroy her. The slimy feeling in the pit of my stomach returned.

"Mother ... it didn't work."

"What didn't work? What do you mean, dear?" The paper rustled as she put it aside.

"David and me. I don't want him ... as a husband, as a lover ... as anything! I don't want this house or one like it. I don't want this life!" I was standing near the bed, arms akimbo, feet planted, head down, defensive, determined to resist her pleas, her tears, her hysteria.

"Juli, I don't understand "

"Oh, you do, too! You invited him in tonight so ... You did everything but turn down the bed and play soft music-to-fuck-by!"

Her eyes and nostrils flared. "Juli, I won't listen to talk like that! I don't know what you're talking about, and I'm sure I don't want you to explain. You've never used words like that with me before, and I don't want to hear anything

"Oh, shit, mother! SHIT! Don't be such a hypocrite! Who do you think you're fooling? Not me! Not dad! Only yourself, I guess. Can't you face anything? Do you have to pretend and fake and lie and "

"STOP IT! You're talking crazy." Her hands knew, though. They were alive again, twisting and torturing the bedding at her waist.

"I suppose I am. I couldn't make you see what I mean in a million years. You're locked in so tight ... I only came in to tell you I'm leaving tomorrow. I'm going back to the tribe. I can't stand this "

She paled as if the blood had been drained from her body in an instant! "No, Juli! Oh, God, no!"

She aged before my eyes. Her eyes went empty and her face changed subtly, somehow, and she was old. "I have to! I have to save myself."

"But what about me?" She had such a stricken look! "I'm sorry! I-"

"I can't live alone! Juli, alone! The terrible empty nights ... "

I looked at her searchingly in that instant! There was a falseness ... an insincerity ... that rang like a cracked bell in her tone and minute behavior. Yes, she was anxious and neurotic and wanted desperately to keep me. But she was putting me on, gliding the lily, overacting! Now she was beginning to sob into her hands.

"Mother, you're an awful ham!" I turned away.

"Juli!"

"I'm sorry, I'm leaving tomorrow. If you want company, invite David over. He'll do anything you want." I closed the door quietly as I left the room and as she wailed, "Juli ... Juli ... "

I returned to my bedroom, slipped out of my robe and climbed into bed. It smelled faintly of sweat and sex.

I couldn't sleep, though. I was on edge, half expecting her to come in and plead and sob ... . I clutched my resolve tight to me and reviewed everything bad about the life in middle-class up-tight San Marino ... and yearned for Owl, the tribe, the tribe life.

I heard mother, still crying, moaning, for my benefit I told myself, go into the bathroom. I saw light seep in under my door from the open bathroom doorway. I heard her gasp. There was a crash as something fell and smashed, then heavy flesh-thud and the house quivered slightly. She had fallen!

I scrambled out of bed and dashed into the bathroom. She had slashed her wrists!