Chapter 4
STEP-PARENTS AND STEP-CHILDREN
The runaway best-seller LOLITA was a true literary masterpiece. Its author was a brilliant and learned writer and scholar. But what does one remember most about the story or the million-dollar movie made from it? Do they recall the masterful characterization and the crisp writing style? Do they look back on the pathos and empathy displayed by the two stars featured in the motion picture version?
The basic reason, in our studied opinion, for LOLITA's success as a book and a movie, as well as for remembrance of it by the public at large, was its controversial theme. Ask any average reader what the book was about, and chances are he will snap back immediately with a comment like: "Oh, that was the story of this middle-aged man who was seduced by his 12-year-old step-daughter."
The fact is that a situation like that depicted in LOLITA is a wish-fantasy of a great many middle-aged men. And undoubtedly, this had a lot to do with the fantastic popularity of the story. But just as most civilized men suppress the urge to kill that grips nearly everyone at one time or another, we also resist other kinds of temptations with no great difficulties, under normal circumstances. Sometimes, we repress them so completely and vehemently that we deny they even exist. _ In step-parent, step-child relations the image of incest is greatly removed, there is not the same feeling of familial love that one has for one's own children. Therefore, the incest-wish or the pedophilic wish that is almost universal is more easily unleashed. A sexually active step-father teased and taunted by a precocious and prematurely developed teenage step-daughter (who may be teasing because she really hates her step-father and wants to prove ^m unworthy of her mother's love), has nowhere near the same sense of parental responsibility, in most cases, as a natural father.
"I called off my engagement," a 37-year-old bachelor physician admitted to us, "because of my fianc‚'s daughter. She was 15 and looked like a movie starlet. She took advantage of every opportunity alone with me to expose herself temptingly. She was a gorgeous thing, an atrociously amoral and precocious young lady. I consider myself a pretty decent person, always have. Oh, but I dread to think what I might have done living under the same roof with that minx."
On the other hand, we find many men in their thirties and beyond who deliberately seek out widows and divorcees with young daughters as marriage prospects. They advertise for them openly in everything from the most blatant sex-club bulletins to the respectable pen-pal, lonely hearts clubs and "friendship" columns of daily newspapers.
"KIND AND GENEROUS gentleman in forties," reads an ad in an internationally popular 'pen-friends' club, "desires to meet lonely widow or divorcee with teenage daughter. Object marriage."
Every qualified woman who replied to the above ad reported that the man was intensely interested in the daughter involved. Using a suave and sophis-98 ticated approach, he told them seriously that he believed in nudism and wanted the three of them to spend a weekend together at a rural nudist retreat. Those who went any further soon found out that the sunshine and health was the last thing he was interested in.
But while he wanted to see the teenagers naked and to eventually coit with them, he was sincere about getting married. What he was asking for, in effect, was carte blanche approval from the mother. In this way, he felt, the mother would hep protect him from the police as well as persuade her own daughter to submit to his wishes, in return for the "privilege" of being married to him.
When the situation is reversed, and it is the new wife who is stepmother to a growing son, the situation develops into an active sexual relation far less frequently. Most mature women do not have the same generally aggressive erotic interest in young boys that men have in girls. Nor is the youth so-likely to be physically impressed by such an older woman.
In the few instances where sexual interest, and sometimes action, does develop, we often find one of two factors present. Either the woman is much older and sexually obsessed almost to the point of nymphomania, or she is very close to the same age as her step-son. In the former case, the step-mother is usually the aggressor and must practically coerce or trap the youth in order to accomplish the affair. In the latter instance, the female may also be the instigator of the liaison that develops, but she finds a far more willing partner.
And if LOLITA is 20th century literature's contribution to the universal nymphet-mania that broods at least ideally in the minds of men, then the "Library Illustrative of Social Progress" edited by John Camden Hotten was certainly the 19th century's contribution to its counterpart, youth-mania. One of the rare classics from this unusual collection tells of an older teenage boy's predilection for light sexual flagellation and how he managed a brief affair with his young and beautiful French step-mother to realize these desires. The text is written in the somewhat Victorian English style of that day, but the message nevertheless is quite unmistakable. It is told in the words of a confidante of the young step-mother:
Case Study (17):
SEXUAL STIMULATION AND SATISFACTION BETWEEN STEP-MOTHER AND STEP-SON BY FLAGELLATION
"He had not any opportunity for some days of courting the felicity he panted from her hands, but at length he obtained it. His father was gone to Picardy about some pressing business, and they were left alone. The lady showed the young gentleman the most engaging fondness, and he in turn called her his charming mama. One evening as she sat in full dress, ready for her carriage to take her to the opera, he kist her lips and hands in mad transport, then threw himself at her feet and kist them an hundred times! He declared to the lady from whom I had this relation, that on beholding her at this time his passion mounted to such a blaze that he was near being deprived of his reason. Her shoes were spangled in the richest manner, and the quarters ornamented with gold fringe; she had a pair of large brilliant buckles of the Artois fashion, and a stocking of the richest silk ornamented with a gold clock. All this, with a gold fringe to her petticoat, had such an effect on him as he lay at her feet, that he wished to expire at them. She took this as the gambols of a fond boy, and would have done so if he had not caught hold of her hand and kist it an hundred times. Her hands and arms were finely formed, and were as fair as snow, and were adorned with the richest jewels, particularly her arms, which had two bracelets set with diamonds, and fastened on with many strings of pearl. She had an eye full of the liquid moisture of love, and a bosom full, and fair as alabaster, which was quite bare. He attempted to put his hands up her petticoats, which she removed, nor would she suffer him to approach the seat of bliss while she lived with his father. When he found it would not do, he went on his knees and confessed how fond he was of being whipt by a lovely woman. This was an amusement the lady had no objection to, as it was quite common in her country (France); but there was no rod at hand. However, she let down his breeches, at his desire, and she slapt his butt with her hand, promising him a whipping to his liking the instant she returned from the opera, if he would procure a rod. She returned before eleven o'clock, and he had a bundle of birch ready for her. When supper was removed and the coast was clear, he put the bundle into her hand, and two yards of pink ribbon which he bought to tie the rod. She selected from the bundle what she thought would tickle him to her mind, and at his desire she stript him to his shirt.-0! said he, who can describe the raptures of that blest moment! An angel of earthly felicity about to administer the sweetest bliss on this side of heaven! all the ravishing beauties of woman blazing in this object! a form princely! a face full of loveliness! hands and arms, legs and feet, cast in the finest mold of beauty, and decorated with the neatest ornaments of art and genius! When he was stript to his shirt, she laid him across her lap, and having removed the tail of his shirt to his shoulders, she took the rod in hand and whirt him smartly, according to his desires, for pissing a bed! When she had given him about fifty strokes he turned about and exhibited his tarriwags, but it would not do. She took them in her hand and played with them, but she had too much honor to suffer the amorous-youth to insult his father by a connexion with her. As to whipping his butt, she considered it a matter of amusement, as indeed all the French ladies do."
PSYCHOLOGICAL COMMENT: While we highly suspect that the above is nothing more than a work of fiction, it is nevertheless worthy of some consideration here. The situation of being birched by an imperiously beautiful woman of dominating qualities was an immensely popular erotic theme of the times. Hotten's book, from which this excerpt is taken, was published only two years after Sacher-Masoch's classic CAIN'S HERITAGE, with its story of VENUS IN FURS, hit the European literary scene.
Spanking and other punishment in early childhood was a prime factor in the adult fascination with flagellation and other forms of sadomasochism in 19th century England. And we see the incestuous connection quite clearly presented in this vignette. The youth calls his young step-mother, "his charming mamma." She is definitely a mother-figure adorned in the finest of clothing and accessories (the VENUS IN FURS theme exactly).
The boy went to his knees begging for the whipping in the classic manner of Severin who groveled at the feet of Sacher-Masoch's imperious Wanda. And to add the final touch of realism, assuming that the account itself is fictional, the young man is whipped for a reason-wetting the bed, like an infant.
This leaves no doubt that many people of that period who were addicted to recreating scenes from their childhood to whet their sexual appetites and satisfy them, were fully conscious of the origins of their desires. It was something instilled in them both mentally and physically.
No doubt, this story had as much fascination for the public at the time and place it was written and read, as LOLITA did a hundred years later.
In searching more recent and reliably documented cases of step-parent, step-child relations, we find, of course, that they run the same gamut of homosexual, heterosexual and deviate activities as those of incest between natural parents and their children. Yet there is no doubt that the temptation is far greater for both partners involved, and the barriers to overt actions are far less stringent.
It would be grossly unfair to assume that every middle-aged man who marries a woman with a pretty young daughter does so with anything like this in mind. The capacity for true and abiding familial love is far more prevalent in marriages of this type than any pseudo-incestuous wish. Here, as elsewhere in this area, we are dealing with a certain fringe group of individuals who go beyond the limits that society and the law allows.
It is not unnatural for a sexual attraction to exist between a step-parent and step-child, any more than it is among any two human beings, but it is abnormal and a sign of neurosis or psychosis when such a fantasy is put into action.
Case History (18):
SODOMY UPON A 7-YEAR-OLD STEP-DAUGHTER BY A 25-YEAR-OLD SOLDIER
Most of the basic facts in this case are a matter of record, contained in the transcript of a U.S. Army Court Martial held recently in Europe. However, to protect the innocent persons involved who have tried to create new lives for themselves, we have altered certain names and other data not pertinent to the central theme of our behavioral study.
"Sergeant Jack Thompson was transferred to his duty station in France on September 18, 1964," our researcher's report began. "He was a good looking, happy-go-lucky bachelor GI, whose buddies described him as 'a great guy,' 'the kind of NCO you can take orders from all day,' 'a real conscientious worker and soldier.'
"In early 1965 he met Lorraine, a vivacious blonde French girl two years his senior, who was a clerk at one of the American PX stores. The 27-year-old Parisienne was a divorcee with a seven-year-old blonde daughter described as 'darling' and 'with a figure just as cute as could be.'
"The courtship was relatively uneventful. They went to the movies and on Sunday picnics with Babette, the daughter. Sergeant Thompson also visited Lorraine's parents often at the small apartment where the four people lived. The wives of girls, held a shower for Lorraine two weeks before the wedding. 'She seemed a kind of strange and quiet girl ... but was terribly pretty,' was the most uncomplimentary comment anyone had about her.
"After a honeymoon at Paris and Garmisch, the Thompsons settled into a small French apartment and then moved into Army quarters five months later. Thy made regular appearances together at the NCO Club and attended parties at the homes of fellow Sergeants and their families. Thompson took his step-daughter to the movies and on walks frequently. He worked nights most of the time and was alone at home with Babette in the daytime quite often when she was not at school. Lorraine continued to work her regular day hours.
"One weekend in the spring of 1966, while her husband was at work and Babette was staying with her grandparents, Lorraine discovered three rolls of developed film and prints in the bedroom. She knew that her husband had a special time-exposure attachment On his camera and tinkered with photography.
"Upon viewing the pictures she had discovered, Lorraine became hysterical and called the MP's. The high quality photographs clearly showed her husband and 7-year-old Babette in poses like the following:
I.) The 25-year-old Sergeant stripped naked, Babette sitting beside him with his erect penis in her hand, her skirt to her waist as she gripped herself at the crotch.
2.) Babette straddling the arm of an easy chair at the front edge, totally nude, as Thompson knelt and cunnilingued her.
3.) The naked Sergeant standing in front of Babette, who was seated on a stool. Her only attire was a pair of panties pushed down to the center of her thighs. She was fellating the Sergeant.
4.) Several poses of Babette in the stages of undressing, some with adult type lingerie, stockings, etc.
5.) Various pictures of her, totally nude, rubbing her unformed breasts and with legs spread wide to reveal the vulva.
6.) Two pictures of her masturbating.
7.) Some poses of the two of them lying together naked in bed, kissing, fondling, masturbating, etc.
"Sergeant Thompson was tried by an Army General Court Martial for sodomy (unnatural sex acts) with a minor child. The trial dragged through two days. With the snapshots as the prosecution's prime evidence, they had no trouble in getting a conviction. Sergeant Thompson was sentenced to six years in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, plus a Dishonorable Discharge, loss of all pay and allowances, and reduction in rank to Private, E-l.
"He broke into tears as he left the courtroom and bid his wife and her victimized daughter farewell. Several of his comrades shook hands with him emotionally."
PSYCHOLOGICAL COMMENT: This case is highly unusual for several reasons. The man had a fine military record spanning his six or seven years in service. He had progressed in rank at a rate above average. He was considered a stable and well-liked individual with good leadership abilities. His wife was a devoted homemaker and mother, as well as a highly desirable girl with an attractive face and figure.
Why would a man with so much going for him seek this depraved type of sexual satisfaction? The real answer may never be known. But with the facts available, we are able to come to a tentative conclusion, and list several probably contributory factors.
The Sergeant had "found a home in the Army," as the saying goes. Quite possibly, the Army was an escape for him from a familial setting that he consciously or subconsciously disliked, or at least felt ambivalent about.
His marriage into a ready-made family that would have normally taken eight years to evolve shattered the "home" he had found in the Armythe barracks camaraderie, the freedom and independence, the hell-raising, etc. From the description of Lorraine, she may well have represented a mother-image, the basically "good" woman with whom sex was taboo.
But what of little Babette? Firstly, she was "exotic," a cute and sensual little foreign girl who understood little English, yet was quite "loving" toward her new "papa." Being European, she expressed this affectionate love in more physical ways than that to which Americans are accustomed. She was not his daughter, but the daughter of what Thompson may have regarded an "unholy" union, his wife's former marriage.
Somewhere along the line, he began to regard Babette with a singular lack of conscience. She became an erotic fantasy, a sensual plaything. And then perhaps after a few drinks too many, the GI found that his advances were not rebuffed, the young girl so adoring him that she accepted whatever he did.
Thus inflamed by alcohol and a pedophilic urge of undetermined origin that was aggravated by his overall situation, Thompson took one more step and then another down the abyss of debauchment. The temptation became overwhelming and he wallowed in the delights of depravity that he found were his for the taking.
We cannot offer excuses for conduct like this, nor raise a hue and cry that he should not be treated as a criminal. He is a criminal, confined to the penitentiary on a serious conviction. We can, however, hope that he will receive psychiatric care while being confined, so that he will not be unleashed upon society with the same problem as when he was incarcerated. For the public's sake as well as his own, treatment is the only final answer.
Case History (19):
"LOVE RELATIONS" BETWEEN A 15-YEAR-OLD GIRL AND HER STEP-FATHER
Mary Jean is a 23-year-old waitress in a fashionable cocktail lounge in a large Eastern city. She is not a patient and shows no serious signs of neurosis, but was referred to us by a friend who knew of her experience. She told her story willingly, frankly, and with a certain poignant quality that may perhaps lead to a better understanding of a viewpoint seldom heard from in these cases.
The interview is recorded here with only the usual reconstruction for protection of identity.
Q-Can you give us a starting point for this phase of your life, Mary Jean. Had you ever been intimate with an adult male before you met your step-father, or before you had intimate relations with him?
A.-At fifteen? What kind of tramp do you think I was?
Q.-I certainly didn't mean to imply anything like that, Mary Jean. But you were only 15 when you had your relation with your step-father. To use the old Dragnet cliche, I'm only trying to get at the facts, ma'am.
A.-Oh, sure, I know you didn't mean anything by it. Only I wanted you to understand I wasn't just some kind of tramp and that Steve was one-of many. I used to make out like crazy in the back seat of his car, only it was just kissing ... tongue kissing and a few feels.
Q.-In the back seat of his car? Do you mean
Steve's? Your step-father's car?
A.-You better believe it. Mom and I double-dated a lot. She could pass for my sister any day ... still can. She knew my dates didn't have a car very often, and before she married Steve, I'd double date with them. It was fun.
Q.-Didn't you ever feel kind of ... peculiar, necking in the back seat of a car with your mother and her boyfriend sitting up front?
A.-Not like you mean, I don't think. You see, I had a crush on Steve then. At first-when mother started going with him-he was like all the other guys she dated. You know-nice, good looking, kidded around with me. Mom always had good-looking boyfriends.
Q.-To begin with then, Steve represented a pleasant sort of possible father-image to you?
A.-Gosh, no! Dad was an old man. Oh, I don't mean to make it sound bad. Only he was 45 when I was five, and mother was only 22. He died when I was six, and, well, I've always thought of fathers as being kind of old men.
Q.-Your mother never went with men who were that old after she started dating?
A.-Never. She told me she loved Dad all right, only it was a mistake to marry a man so much older. Some of her boyfriends were younger that she was. Steve was 31 and Mom was 32 when they started dating. All her boyfriends were kind of handsome and glamorous as far as I was concerned. Some of them had a lot of money and big cars too.
Q.-Let's get back to how it affected you-double-dating with your mother and necking in the same car.
A.-Oh, sure! I was going to tell you about how I used to feel so awful. I was just going through the motions with my own boyfriend, and having a triple fit about Mom and Steve making out in the front seat. Gosh, he was kissing her like crazy and their heads would go down out of sight ... I'd hear Mom whispering, 'No, darling ... not now...' with her voice trembling. And I could hear them kissing! My flesh would crawl.
Q.-Can you describe the particular emotion? Was it jealousy? Hate Passion? Why didn't it make you have more of a feeling for what your boyfriend was doing?
A.-He was just a kid! Gosh, don't you get it? Mom was with a real man, a lover! What was I with? Some 15 or 16-year-old knucklehead! Yeah, used to get passionate. Then I'd feel like a heel getting all shook up over Steve! But, oh gosh, I could feel those kisses and my imagination went wild. I couldn't sleep after I got home and he'd take Mom over to his apartment. I knew what they were doing!
Q.-Did you ever tell her about this?
A.-Never.
Q.-Before the marriage, was there ever any kind of intimacy, or flirtation even, between you and Steve?
A.-He kissed me a couple of times. Mother was right there. Just friendly kisses and I didn't think they meant anything to him.
Q.-But they did to you?
A.-You better believe they did. I was on a cloud for an hour.
I'll
Q.-When were the first approaches made after Steve became your step-father?
A.-Well, you see, Mom's a beautician and worked a 12-hour-day on Saturdays. Steve and I used to kid around a lot. He was like a friendly boyfriend, kind of. Maybe like a brother should be. At least, I thought that's the way it was from his side. I was nuts about him, only I figured it was like a crush you get on a good-looking teacher.
It grew on us, I guess, really. We got more informal and all. I'd walk around in my slip and panties. He'd go around in his shorts. That used to really shake me up. Believe it or not, I'd never seen a penis ... really seen one in daylight before. I was dying to see what he had. The outline in his shorts used to bug me like crazy.
One afternoon, he was sitting in the living room LOOKING AT TV in his shorts. It was awful hot. I walked in in my panties and slip to bring him a beer. When I leaned over to set it down, his eyes went straight for my breasts. I blushed and put my hand over the slip to hide them. Our eyes met ... and that was it.
Q.-You mean you had intercourse just like that?
A.-No! Not right that second. Only the way my heart was beating and the way he was looking at me, his lips kind of quivering, it was like nothing before. I knew this meant something. You know what I mean? We could both feel it, and we each knew the other felt it. Steve looked me straight in the eye and said, 'We've both been fighting this for a long time, haven't we, Mary Jean?'
Q.-And then?
A.-Oh, I collapsed ... right into his arms. Gosh, our lips met and twisted against each others' and ... my hand went right for his shorts. I was crazy with love. How do you say it? I lost all reason, everything! My whole body was just bursting with love!
Q.-Can you tell me about it ... without being embarrassed?
A.-Now I can, sure, after eight years. I wanted him so bad, I tried to sit on his lap to do it. He had some sense though, thank gosh. We went into my room and he spread newspapers over the bed and covered them with two old sheets. He told me it was going to hurt. I didn't care. I wanted him in me! Oh, I did everything. I was out of my mind, I tell you. I kissed him all over, only he said it was unnatural. I didn't care! I loved him!
Guys ... guys always had a weakness for my breasts and I liked to have them felt. Oh, but Steve licked my nipples ... and kissed like a man! I was out of my mind! I took hold of his penis and begged that man to do it ... do it now! I've never felt more ... more like a woman in my life than when he spread my legs and got over me. Oh, he was so beautiful! I had my hands all over that gorgeous hunk ... twisting the hairs in his chest and...
Oh, God, I wanted him IN ME! Steve was sweating something terrible, only he knew what he was doing. He pushed ... just a little, and then a little bit more. Oh ... oh, it was good. He did my.. .
Q.-You don't have to go into each detail, Mary Jean. I didn't mean to try to make you re-live it.
A.-Oh ... well, when you've only had one love in your life, I guess ... well, I got a little ... I overdid it. Whew! Yeah, I do feel kind of funny, I guess.
Q.-You did have a completed act of coitus that night?
A-We had love relations. I'll never call it anything else. We had complete love relations. And we had one every week after that. I should have felt like a real heel. I guess I did in a way, only I was so crazy in love with Steve I only cared about my own happiness. I was too selfish to care.
Q.-How long did this last?
A.-Forever ... Oh, I know what you mean. I'll get off cloud nine in a second. It lasted until Steve asked me to marry him, and I woke up to myself. I loved that man more than anyone can know. I thought I'd do anything for his love ... anything!
Only suddenly I got some sense, I guess. I could , do what I was doing ... stealing his love on the side ... but I couldn't hurt Mom by letting her know. She'd done too much for me after Dad died without leaving her a cent. There was only one answer. We couldn't go on. We had to either tell Mom and then Steve get a divorce so we could marry ... or we had to quit!
Steve got pretty mad, and I knew I couldn't go on living in the same house with him. I told Mom I wanted to go live up in Jersey with my two cousins for my last couple years in school because of a personality problem with a teacher. I moved up there the next month.
Q.-Is there any ending to the story? Are Steve and your mother still married?
A.-There's no ending ... no. They're still married, Sure. I picked a fight with Mom on purpose and we just write letters ... Q.-And Steve?
A-I've never heard from him ... never. It must be awful for him too. It was the only time ... I was ever in love. The only time...
PSYCHOLOGICAL COMMENT: While there is no doubt that Steve deserves the heaviest burden of guilt in this affair, Mary Jean must also share the blame. She was, of course, at a highly impressionable stage of adolescence. She described her emotions as that of a high-school crush at first. Yet many high school and college crushes have also gone astray.
While the real villain is Steve, an adult who must stand responsible for his overt acts with a minor child, we may well wonder how he might have told the story from his side. We think it may well have gone something like this:
"What the heck, I'm a man, aren't I? What would you do sitting around that house all day Saturday alone with an overly developed teenage sexpot showing herself off to you at every chance, bending over to serve you beer and sticking her breasts right in your face? That kid had been asking for it a long time, mister. I only gave her what she wanted."
This analysis too would be substantially correct. Consciously or subconsciously, Mary Jean wanted to make love with Steve enough to provoke him into it. And she did a very effective job.
But there is a difference between consciousness and conscience. Steve showed this when he tried to make everything "right," as well as enjoy having a wife half his own age, by offering to marry her. Mary Jean, however, showed a far more mature attitude when she decided to call off the affair entirely and remove herself from the scene, and temptation's way.
While she is not noticeably neurotic as a result, she still bears the scars of this unfortunate episode in her life. It has made an indelible impression on her. Steve is "the only man I could ever love," she insists, all else will be anti-climax. She tries to pin the label of love on what was a criminal act at worst, and merely a tawdry affair of sexual passion at best.
Her sense of values needs a searching self-appraisal before she can be at peace with the world and lead a completely normal life.
Case History (20):
STEP-MOTHER, STEP-SON RELATIONS IN A WORKING CLASS FAMILY
"You know what it's like to be a heavy-equipment operator and make two hundred bucks and better a week?" said this 21-year-old construction worker, outspoken on the subject of his experience. "You live in a good neighborhood and you make more dough than the snobs with the college diplomas, baby. And they still think you're a slob! That's why you gotta be different, gotta keep proving you can keep up with 'em and do better even. That's why Pop married Gloria. He wanted to show off a 22-year-old broad with a body like a brick house to those imagine idiots with their fat ugly 116 wives.
"Pop was a first class, A-one sucker! What was he? He was a 46-year-old crane operator with a big fat paycheck. What was she? A ass! A weasel who hung out at Donatell's (a place where the construction workers cashed their paychecks and went to drink on Saturdays) mooching free drinks and selling it for the first 50-dollar-bill that showed.
"Hell, I ain't knockin' the looks, baby. Gloria had natural blonde hair and bazooms and legs, and a rear end, that could make a priest forget his vows. Underneath, she was dirt. Not the kind anybody wants to marry unless he's a pimp.
"Pop bought her nice clothes and brought her home to see me and Sis. We just about puked! We told him what we thought of his crazy idea the next day and he read us off good. I was 14 and I didn't count. He was the boss. It was his house and his money, and by God he'd been without a wife ever since Mom died 12 years before.
"With Sis it was different. She was 19 and wor-kin'. She cut, baby. She left flat when they come in wavin' that marriage license. My God, what a ass! Gloria, man. Not my Sis.
"You know what it's like comin' home from school to a half-naked woman with a body like that who's polished off half a fifth already? Hell, Gloria was a lush to boot. Usually, a happy, laughing lush, but she had her crazy moods too. She'd kid around with me, just tease me when she was happy. I was 14, but I'd had me a broad before. Hell, I was 12 the first time.
"Gloria could get me going, but I hated her too damn much when she was in the happy mood. I could sit there excited as all hell (he mentions that he would have an erection while watching her at these times) when she swished her rear end around with only a pair a panties on. She used to wear a bra you could see right through to cover the big bazooms too. I could get hot and hate her at the same time. It was easy, baby ... easy.
"When she'd be in the crazy moods, she had me. I mean I come home once and she was bawling, claimed Pop didn't love her and she was going to jump in the river, slash her wrists, everything crazy. That's when she asked me to crawl in bed with her ... when she was cryin' and goin' on. Gloria said she needed some love, she was starved for love. She said Pop was the sweetest guy in the world and she wouldn't do anything to hurt him, but Pop was too old to give her the special kind of love a young girl needed.
"That's when I was the big fat sucker. She talked me into that like I'd be doing my old man a favor. See, the way she put it was this: If I didn't take care of her, she had only two other choices-she could start running around, or go kill herself. Either way, Pop would get hurt bad. But if I was her lover, it could be our little secret.
"Yeah! Our little secret. Do you know what it's like for a 14-year-old kid to come home to a crazy nymphomaniac every day? I think she musta spent all morning thinking up new tricks. By the time I was 15, I'd lived, baby. I'd done more things than I did the two years I was in the Army in Germany.
"She was a damn pervert, you know. I mean wanting me to (insert his finger into her anus during love play) and all that kind of stuff. When she'd get all excited, she'd tell me about how she'd done it with two and three guys at the same time, even with girls-married broads who used to pay her 50 bucks to (cunnilingue them).
"How the hell does a 15-year-old kid get out of a mess like that? I'll tell you how I got out. I lied about my age and tried to join the Navy. When that didn't work, I bed about my age and registered for the draft and volunteered. I hadn't been away six months when Pop wrote about his stupid 'heartbreak'. Gloria was messin' around, he said. He caught her in bed with some wine-o punk she'd picked up in a bar.
"They didn't get a divorce. Pop just kicked her out. She's come back begging him since, and Pop gets what he wants, then kicks her rear end right out again. She threatened to sue him for support, and that's when I spilled my guts. He hasn't heard from the broad since.
"You know what? Pop understood! Hell, he even laughed about it. He said I musta been broken in good if Gloria was my teacher. He said I wouldn't have to learn anything else after her. Damn, if he wasn't right too. The broads I had over in Germany said I was the greatest, and half the broads I hammer now-even the older broads around 30-they tell me I can really teach 'em some things.
"Yeah, broads are all the same. Once you get their pants off, they'll do anything..."
PSYCHOLOGICAL COMMENT: Behaviorally, Gloria can be described as a Messalina, a sexual adventuress of the worst kind. Psychologically, she may have been a nymphomaniac, or at least one who completely manifested her deep feelings of inferiority in a demand to be constantly loved sexually.
We do not know how deliberate her "crazy" mood was when she tempted her 14-year-old stepson into bed by crying and appealing to his sympathies. It is very-likely that she knew exactly what she was doing. The blatant, overt tease had failed to gain response, so she appealed to his sympathetic side, to his love for his father, in a cleverly twisted way.
Of course, the youth should have resisted. But he was caught in an emotional trap. The net result of all this was to eventually bring his father to his senses, but to make a woman-hater out of the son. He obviously now regards all women as "bumbs." With only the faintest recollection of his own mother, and the standard mother or wife image shattered for him by Gloria, he feels that all females are "perverts" in much the same manner as his step-mother.
The one redeeming factor in his life is the sister who left home. In further questioning, it was revealed that he does have a high regard for her. But unfortunately, his reason for this is based partly on the fact that she is not an attractive girl and has no dates.
He needs therapy to correct his outlook on life, but any mention of seeing a psychologist or psychiatrist as a patient is anathema to him. To his mind, women are "bums," and "headshrinkers are nuts."
We do not seem to find so many cases of stepparent, step-child relations reaching the courts as those involving natural parent-child incest. One of the reasons may well be that the more developed adolescent who usually becomes involved with a step-parent often does so willingly, or at least offers little objection.
Where we see pedophiliacs deliberately marrying women with young children, there are a regretful number of cases where the mother has proven to be a party to the crime. Some are so desperate for a husband they prostitute their own child. Others have a bizarre troilistic interest with elements of Lesbian incest, whereby they become a party to the depraved acts with their own daughters.
In these latter unfortunate instances, the innocent child is often "brainwashed" by the new stepfather, with the aid of the mother. The child is very carefully introduced to certain new freedoms, such as nakedness around the house, being able to observe the mother and her husband in love acts. From there, the diabolical pedophiliac may begin a course of "sex education" such as that instituted by Edward for his own children in Case History 13.
The situation is often such that it offers the miscreant the opportunity to carry out the incest-wish common to so many, without the more unpleasant associations that actual incest would involve. Thus, an older man with grown daughters of his own whom he had never dared touch, might marry a woman with a younger daughter and carry out the repressed desires in what appears to him a more liberal environment, by a carefully calculated plan.
In other words, the element of suddenness, of shock, of near-rape, is seldom present where stepparents become involved with their young step-children. For these reasons alone, we may hypothesize that the practice may be more widespread than arrest and mental health statistics would indicate, yet still a rarity when compared to the overall step-parent situations in the population.