Myra Breckinridge

by Gore Vidal

  “Jesus,” he whispered. “I almost threw up.”

  “I’m sorry. But I have to be thorough. I’ll be gentler this time.” Again my hand pushed past the damp cloth and seized the right testicle, which was somewhat smaller than the left. As I maneuvered it gently about, my forefinger strayed and struck the side of something thick and smooth, rooted in wiry hair. He shuddered, but continued to suffer at my hands. I slipped the right testicle into its ancient place and held it there until I sensed he was about to gag. Then I let it drop and removed my hand.

  He gave a deep sigh. “I guess that’s it.”

  “Yes, I think so.” I pretended to examine the chart.

  With a sigh, he sat down on the chair opposite me and clumsily pulled on one sock, tearing the flimsy material; the toes went through the tip.

  “You’re very clumsy.” I observed.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He agreed, quickly pulling on the other sock, not wanting in any way to cross me, so eager was he to escape.

  “Oh, here’s a question we forgot.” I was incredibly sunny. “Have you been circumcised?”

  The foot he was holding on his knee slid to the floor. Quickly he pressed his thighs together, wadded up his shirt, and covered the beleaguered lap. “Why, no, ma’am. I never was.”

  “So few Polish boys are, I’m told.” I made a check on the chart. “Does the skin pull back easily?”

  “Oh, sure!” He was beet-red. “Sure. I’m O.K. Mary-Ann’s waiting.”

  “Not so fast.” I was cold. “I didn’t give you permission to dress, you know.”

  “But I thought you were finished . . .” The deep voice was now a whine.

  “I was. But your jumping the gun like that makes me very suspicious.”

  “Suspicious?” He was bewildered.

  “Yes. First, I let you talk me out of giving you the venereal disease examination, and now you’re suddenly getting dressed, without permission, just when the subject once more has to do with your penis. Rusty, I am very, very suspicious.”

  The blue eyes filled with tears as he sensed what was approaching. “Don’t be, Miss Myra. Believe me, I’m absolutely O.K . . .”

  “We have to think of Mary-Ann, too, you know. You could make her very sick just through your carelessness.”

  “Honest to God, I’m O.K. They even gave me the Wassermann test in the jail . . .” He jabbered nervously.

  “I’m sure they did. But what was the result?”

  “Mr. Martinson will tell you. I was a hundred per cent O.K.”

  “But Mr. Martinson isn’t here while you are, and frankly I don’t see how I can omit this part of the examination. Stand up please and put down that shirt.”

  “Oh, come on, please don’t . . .” His voice broke again, close to a sob.

  “Do as I say.”

  On that note of icy command, he stood up slowly and like a man going to his execution—or a schoolboy to his spanking—he put down the shirt and stood dumbly facing me. “Come over here.” He came to within a few inches of where I was sitting; he was so close that my knees touched the warm fur of his shins.

  “Now let’s see what kind of stud you really are.”

  “Please . . .” He whispered. “I don’t want to. It isn’t right.”

  Deliberately I took the Jockey shorts by the elastic waistband and pulled them slowly, slowly down, enjoying each station of his shame. The first glimpse was encouraging. The base of the penis sprouted from the bronze bush at an angle of almost forty-five degrees, an earnest of vitality. It was well over an inch wide, always a good sign, with one large blue vein down the center, again promising. But another three inches of slow unveiling revealed Rusty’s manhood in its entirety, I slid the shorts to the floor.

  When I looked up at his face, I saw that once again the eyes were shut, the lips trembling. Then I carefully examined the object of my long and arduous hunt, at last captive. A phrase of Myron’s occurred to me: “all potatoes and no meat.” Rusty’s balls were unusually large and impressive; one lower than the other, as they hung bulllike in the rather loose scrotal sac. They were all that I could desire. The penis, on the other hand, was not a success, and I could see now why he was so reluctant to let me see just how short it is. On the other hand both base and head are uncommonly thick and, as Myron always said, thickness not length is how you gauge the size of the ultimate erection. The skin was dead white with several not undecorative veins, while the foreskin covered the entire head, meeting at the tip in an irregular rosy pucker, plainly cousin to the sphincter I had so recently probed.

  “I’m afraid, Rusty, that you’ve been somewhat oversold on the campus. Poor Mary-Ann. That’s a boy’s equipment.”

  This had the desired effect of stinging him into a manly response. “Ain’t been no complaints,” he growled. But as he did, both testicles rose in their sac as though seeking an escape hatch in case of battle, while the penis betrayed him by visibly shrinking into the safety of the brush.

  “Next you’ll tell me that it’s not the size that counts but what you do.” I followed verbal insult with physical: I took the penis firmly in my hand.

  He dared not move, or speak, or even cry out. The shock had reduced him exactly as planned. I had also confirmed an old theory that although the “normal” male delights in exposing himself to females who attract him he is, conversely, terrified to do so in front of those he dislikes or fears, as though any knowledge they might obtain of the center of his being will create bad magic and hence unman him. In any case, the grail was in my hand at last, smooth, warm, soft.

  My joy was complete as I slid back the skin, exposing the shiny deep rose of the head which was impressively large and beautifully shaped, giving some credence to the legend that, in action, its owner (already Rusty had become a mere appendage to this reality) was a formidable lover. He was sweaty but clean (I was so close to him that I could smell the strong but not disagreeable fernlike odor of genitals). Delicately but firmly, I pressed the glans, making the phallic eye open. Not one tear was shed. “Apparently, you are all right,” I observed as he looked down with horror at my hand which held him firmly in its grasp, the glans penis exposed like a summer rose.

  “You’re also clean but beyond that I’m afraid you’re something of a disappointment.” The penis again shrank in my hand. “But of course you’re probably still growing.” The humiliation was complete. There was nothing that he could say. In actual fact, the largeness of the head had already convinced me that what I said was untrue, but policy dictated that I be scornful.

  “Now then, let’s see how free the foreskin is.” I slid the skin forward, then back. He shuddered. “Now, you do it a few times.”

  To his relief, I let him go. Clumsily he took himself in one hand as though never before had he touched this strange object, so beloved of Mary-Ann. He gave a few halfhearted tugs to the skin, looking for all the world like a child frightened in the act of masturbating.

  “Come on,” I said, “you can do better than that.”

  He changed his grip to the one he obviously used when alone. His hand worked rapidly as he pumped himself like one of those machines that extract oil from the earth, milk from the cow, water from shale. After several minutes of intense and rhythmic massage I noted, with some surprise, that though the head had become a bit larger and darker, the stem had not changed in size. Apparently he knew how to restrain himself. He continued for another minute or two, the only sound in the room his heavy breathing and the soft waterlike sound of skin slapping against skin; then he stopped.

  “You see,” he said. “It works O.K.”

  “But I didn’t tell you to stop.”

  “But if I keep on . . . I mean . . . well, Christ, a man’s going to . . .”

  “A boy,” I corrected.

  “A boy’s going to . . . to . . .”

  “To what?”

  “Get . . . excited.”

  “Go right ahead. I’d be amused to see what Mary-Ann sees in you.”

&
nbsp; Without another word, grimly, he set to work and continued for some time, sweating hard. But still we were denied the full glory. Some lengthening and thickening took place but not to the fullest degree.

  “Is anything wrong?” I asked sweetly.

  “I don’t know.” He gulped, trying to catch his breath. “It can’t . . . won’t . . .” He was incoherent at the double humiliation.

  “Do you often have this problem with Mary-Ann?” I sounded as compassionate as Kay Francis, as warm as June Allyson.

  “Never! I swear . . .”

  “Five times in one night and now this! Really, you young boys are such liars.”

  “I wasn’t lying. I just don’t know what’s wrong . . .” He beat at himself as though through sheer force he could tap the well of generation. But it was no use. Finally I told him to stop. Then I took over, practicing a number of subtle pressures and frictions learned from Myron . . . all to no avail.

  In a curious way the absence of an erection, though not part of the plan, gave me an unexpected thrill: to have so cowed my victim as to short-circuit his legendary powers as a stud was, psychologically, far more fulfilling than my original intention.

  While I was vigorously shaking him, he made the long-expected move that would complete the drama, the holy passion of Myra Breckinridge.

  “Do you . . .” He began tentatively, looking down at me and the loose-stemmed rose that I held in my hand.

  “Do I what?”

  “Do you want me to . . . well, to ball you?” The delivery was superb, as shy as a nubile boy requesting a first kiss.

  I let go of him as though in horror. “Rusty! Do you know who you’re talking to?”

  “Yes, Miss Myra. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you . . .”

  “What sort of woman do you think I am?” I took the heavy balls in my hand, as an offering. “These belong to Mary-Ann, and no one else, and if I ever catch you playing around with anybody else, I’ll see that Mr. Martinson puts you away for twenty years.”

  He turned white. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I thought maybe . . . the way you were . . . doing what you were doing . . . I’m sorry, really.” The voice stopped.

  “You have every reason to be sorry.” Again I let him go; the large balls swung back between his legs, and continued gently to sway, like a double pendulum. “In any case, if I had wanted you to—as you put it—‘ball me,’ it’s very plain that you couldn’t. As a stud, you’re a disaster.”

  He flushed at the insult but said nothing. I was now ready for my master stroke. “However, as a lesson, I shall ball you.” He was entirely at sea. “Ball me? How?”

  “Put out your hands.” He did so and I bound them together with surgical gauze. Not for nothing had I once been a nurses’ aide.

  “What’re you doing that for?” Alarm growing.

  With a forefinger, I flicked the scrotal sac, making him cry out from shock. “No questions, my boy.” When the hands were firmly secured, I lowered the examination table until it was just two feet from the floor. “Lie down,” I ordered. “On your stomach.”

  Mystified, he did as he was told. I then tied his bound hands to the top of the metal table. He was, as they say, entirely in my power. If I had wanted, I could have killed him. But my fantasies have never involved murder or even physical suffering for I have a horror of blood, preferring to inflict pain in more subtle ways, destroying totally, for instance, a man’s idea of himself in relation to the triumphant sex.

  “Now then, up on your knees.”

  “But . . .” A hard slap across the buttocks put an end to all objections. He pulled himself up on his knees, legs tight together and buttocks clenched shut. He resembled a pyramid whose base was his head and white-socked feet, and whose apex was his rectum. I was now ready for the final rite.

  “Legs wide apart,” I commanded. Reluctantly, he moved his knees apart so that they lined up with the exact edges of the table. I was now afforded my favorite view of the male, the heavy rosy scrotum dangling from the groin above which the tiny sphincter shyly twinkled in the light. Carefully I applied lubricant to the mystery that even Mary-Ann has never seen, much less violated.

  “What’re you doing?” The voice was light as a child’s True terror had begun.

  “Now remember the secret is to relax entirely. Otherwise you could be seriously hurt.”

  I then pulled up my skirt to reveal, strapped to my groin, Clem’s dildo which I borrowed yesterday on the pretext that I wanted it copied for a lamp base. Clem had been most amused.

  Rusty cried out with alarm. “Oh, no! For God’s sake, don’t.”

  “Now you will find out what it is the girl feels when you play the man with her.”

  “Jesus, you’ll split me!” The voice was treble with fear. As I approached him, dildo in front of me like the god Priapus personified, he tried to wrench free of his bonds, but failed. Then he did the next best thing, and brought his knees together in an attempt to deny me entrance. But it was no use. I spread him wide and put my battering ram to the gate.

  For a moment I wondered if he might not be right about the splitting: the opening was the size of a dime while the dildo was over two inches wide at the head and nearly a foot long. But then I recalled how Myron used to have no trouble in accommodating objects this size or larger, and what the fragile Myron could do so could the inexperienced but sturdy Rusty.

  I pushed. The pink lips opened. The tip of the head entered and stopped.

  “I can’t,” Rusty moaned. “Honestly I can’t. It’s too big.”

  “Just relax, and you’ll stretch. Don’t worry.”

  He made whatever effort was necessary and the pursed lips became a grin allowing the head to enter, but not without a gasp of pain and shock.

  Once inside, I savored my triumph. I had avenged Myron. A lifetime of being penetrated had brought him only misery. Now, in the person of Rusty, I was able, as Woman Triumphant, to destroy the adored destroyer.

  Holding tight to Rusty’s slippery hips, I plunged deeper. He cried out with pain.

  But I was inexorable. I pushed even farther into him, triggering the prostate gland, for when I felt between his legs, I discovered that the erection he had not been able to present me with had now, inadvertently, occurred. The size was most respectable, and hard as metal.

  But when I plunged deeper, the penis went soft with pain, and he cried out again, begged me to stop, but now I was like a woman possessed, riding, riding, riding my sweating stallion into forbidden country, shouting with joy as I experienced my own sort of orgasm, oblivious to his staccato shrieks as I delved and spanned that innocent flesh. Oh, it was a holy moment! I was one with the Bacchae, with all the priestesses of the dark bloody cults, with the great goddess herself for whom Attis unmanned himself. I was the eternal feminine made flesh, the source of life and its destroyer, dealing with man as incidental toy, whose blood as well as semen is needed to make me whole!

  There was blood at the end. And once my passion had spent itself, I was saddened and repelled. I had not meant actually to tear the tender flesh but apparently I had, and the withdrawing of my weapon brought with it bright blood. He did not stir as I washed him clean (like a loving mother), applying medicine to the small cut, inserting gauze (how often had I done this for Myron!). Then I unbound him.

  Shakily, he stood up, rubbing tears from his swollen face. In silence he dressed while I removed the harness of the dildo and put it away in the attaché case.

  Not until he was finally dressed did he speak. “Can I go now?”

  “Yes. You can go now.” I sat down at the surgical table and took out this notebook. He was at the door when I said, “Aren’t you going to thank me for the trouble I’ve taken?”

  He looked at me, face perfectly blank. Then, tonelessly, he murmured, “Thank you, ma’am,” and went.

  And so it was that Myra Breckinridge achieved one of the great victories for her sex. But one which is not yet entirely complete even though, alone
of all women, I know what it is like to be a goddess enthroned, and all-powerful.

  30

  I sit now at the card table. Through the window I can see the turning chorus girl in front of the Château Marmont; only she is not turning. A power failure? are they making repairs? or is she at last being dismantled? The question takes on symbolic importance since she is, to me, Hollywood. She must never not be allowed to dominate the Strip.

  Rusty did not appear at school today. I would have been disappointed if he had. But what did distress me was Mary-Ann’s absence from Posture. She has never before missed one of my classes.

  Discouraged and uneasy, I rang Miss Cluff to see if Mary-Ann had attended the Bell Telephone Hour class. She had not, “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of her. But you know how girls are. It’s probably her time . . .” Belllike laughter from Miss Cluff. Next I rang the girls’ dormitory. The matron told me that Mary-Ann had not returned the previous evening, and she had already made a report to Buck.

  I confess I was terrified. Had Rusty told her what had happened? I could not believe it. Masculine pride (no matter how damaged) would have prevented him. But he still could have told her something which had made her leave the school . . . and me. I had a sudden vision of them together in Mexico, growing marijuana, utterly happy. The thought was too depressing. Also, I reminded myself, impractical since he is on parole and may not leave L. A., much less cross the border.

  Matters were not much helped when I received a call from Buck’s office to see him at five. I found him looking altogether too pleased with himself. With him was a typical California type: a bronzed empty face with clear eyes and that vapid smile which the Pacific Ocean somehow manages to impress upon the lips of almost everyone doomed to live in any proximity to those tedious waters. It is fascinating how, in a single generation, stern New England Protestants, grim Iowans and keen New York Jews have all become entirely Tahitianized by that dead ocean with its sweet miasmic climate in which thoughts become dreams while perceptions blur and distinctions are so erased that men are women are men are nothing are everything are one. Gentlemen, the desire and the pursuit of the whole ends at Santa Monica!