by Linda Jaivin
“Nothing wrong with that,” Chantal approved, blowing a smoke ring.
“I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or not, but he seemed to, you know, have an, uh, erection.”
“I got a stiffy, Carr. Right in the middle of the Sando. The second she leaned against me. I was so embarrassed. I wasn’t sure if she was aware of it or not. I was completely convinced, of course, that everyone in the whole room could tell. And I was terrified that I was going to, you know—”
“Shoot?”
Marc blushed. “Carr!”
“Well, isn’t that what you meant?”
“Yeah, I suppose. But there have to be other ways of putting it. I hate that one. It’s so, I dunno, masculist or something. I think we should get rid of gun metaphors for sex.”
“We should get rid of guns, period. And just keep the metaphors. I rather like them myself.” Carolyn smiled. “Not being a dogmatic kind of feminist like you.”
“I’m not dogmatic! Do you think I’m dogmatic? God, one minute I’ve got a male pride problem, the next I’m a dogmatic feminist.”
“And that’s why you’re such a cutie, Marc. You’re a mass of contradictions.”
Marc decided not to consider the implications of that. “Anyway, she took half a step forward and started to dance. I stood behind her, completely mesmerized by the sight of her hips swaying. And her back. I really like the little lumps of flesh that swell up just underneath her bra and push out against her shirt, as if all that voluptuousness refuses to be contained.”
“You’re weird, Marc.”
“I told you that when you insisted on being friends with me, Carr. Now you’re stuck.”
“Yeah, so I noticed. What kind of music does Jake’s band play anyway?”
“Surfie metal. With a touch of funk.”
“Right. Maybe he’s not for me after all. I’m more of an acid jazz kinda girl. So then what happened?”
“We just kind of bopped around in place and after a while I felt his hands alight, very gently, on my shoulders. We danced like that, both facing the band. I was thinking, where is this going? And then again, I knew. Of course, I knew. To be honest, I had a pretty good idea where it might go when he asked me out.
“Just then, the band blew an amp and had to break while they rustled up another one. I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I move away? My conscience was chucking a wobbly: He’s only twenty-one! He’s your student! Lecturers have been crucified for lesser crimes than the one you are about to commit! Meanwhile, his hands were slipping down my arms, very slowly, coming to rest on mine. I’m not quite sure who made the first move, but soon we were standing very close together, and he definitely had a hard on now, if he didn’t have one before. My heart was beating like a schoolgirl’s. I twined my fingers into his and we stood there, not talking, not even looking at each other for the eternity it seemed to take for the band to find another amp.”
Helen gazed off to the side.
“And then?” prompted Chantal.
Helen sighed. “And then, well, we just sort of went to his place and did it, didn’t we?”
“Oh come on, you can’t leave it there, after all that buildup. Was it good?”
Helen scratched her nose as she thought about how to answer that one. “Yes, it was. It was good,” she replied, carefully. “But it must never happen again. I really like Marc, and he’s terribly cute, but it just doesn’t feel right. I can’t do it again, Chantie. I can’t sleep with a student.”
Just as Chantal was about to press for more details, a tall forty-something man approached them. He was wearing a simple black T-shirt with jeans over his lean but taut body. His thick salt-and-pepper hair topped pleasant if unremarkable features. With an apologetic air, he tapped Helen on the shoulder. She hadn’t seen him coming, and she jumped.
“G’day, Helen,” he addressed her shyly. “Hope I’m not interrupting.”
“Oh! Sam! G’day. What are you up to?” Had he heard what she was saying? She felt a cold sweat irrigate her palms.
“Going to meet a mate of mine just up the street for a drink and then we’re heading off for dinner. I spotted you in here as I was walking by.” Sam smiled at Chantal. “I’m Sam. A colleague of Helen’s at the uni.”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry, how rude of me. Sam, Chantal. Chantal, Sam.” Helen began to relax. He didn’t seem to have overheard after all.
“Nice to meet you, Chantal,” Sam said.
“Likewise,” answered Chantal. “I’ve heard Helen speak of you.”
“Really?” Sam glanced at Helen, a hopeful expression flickering across his features. “Not all bad things, I hope?”
When Helen invited him to join them for a drink, he said he really should get to the other pub to meet his friend. He was already running late. “But, uh, if you’re not doing anything special,” he suggested warmly, “you two are welcome to join us.”
“So, finally, we walked out and down King Street. I was half bent over, I was feeling so self-conscious about my hard on. Amazingly, she didn’t seem to notice. Thankfully, it soon calmed down. Must’ve been the chill in the air. Anyway, somehow we ended up back at my place.”
“Did you tell her you were a virgin?”
“Not so loud, Carr! Jeez!” Marc’s eyes darted anxiously around the room. If anyone had heard, they gave no indication. He frowned down at his plate. “Not really.”
“What do you mean, not really?”
“Uh, not until, you know, not before, like . . .”
Carolyn leaned forward and ran her hand over the Velcro surface of his scalp and gave one of the pigtails a playful tug. She smiled. “You know, Marc, I think you’re actually embarrassed.”
“Piss off, Carr,” he pouted.
“I’m only joking. It’s just that you’re so cute. I can’t resist teasing you.”
“Cute? There’s that word again. Is that anything for a boy my age to be?” He put his head in his hands. “Oh, Carr, what am I going to do? Do you think she’ll see me, you know, outside class again? How will I be able to last out the semester?”
“Don’t you think,” Carolyn commented, shaking her head, “that you should have thought of that a bit earlier?”
What exactly, Philippa wondered, staring into her computer screen, do you lose when you lose your virginity to someone? Can it ever be considered merely to have been misplaced? And where does it go, when you lose it? Down the back of the sofa with the small change, stale lollies, and that key you’ve been looking for all afternoon? And what does the other person gain, exactly, when you lose your virginity to them?
What exactly did happen that night?
She gazed out her window. There was that man across the way again. He must have rented the flat. She’d seen the lights on there a number of times now. He was looking away from her, though she was sure he had been spying on her just moments before. She studied him, sure she’d seen him somewhere else before. Finally, it twigged. He worked in the local supermarket. Of course.
She’d deal with him later.
But it was time to get back to Helen and Marc, whom we last saw walking through Newtown to Marc’s flat.
Inside Marc’s place, they were suddenly awkward. Helen looked around. They’d passed through a foyer and into the living room. It was furnished with thirdhand sofas and chairs. A Greenpeace poster, the Aboriginal flag, and assorted posters for bands were stuck to the wall with Scotch Tape and tacks. The room was strewn with books and papers and CDs.
On the floor, close by where they were standing, was a coffee cup in which white mold floated on the remnants of an ancient brown liquid. Marc carefully nudged the saucer with his foot until it and the cup disappeared under the hem of the sofa. He hoped Helen hadn’t noticed. She had of course; women notice everything.
“Do you live by yourself?” she asked.
“No, there are three others,” he explained. “But they’ve gone away for the weekend. So it’s just me.” Indicating the general mess, he laughed nervously
. “We’re not really the greatest of housekeepers.” She shrugged. He beckoned her into the kitchen. “Uh, do you want a cup of tea or something?”
“That’d be nice.” Helen nodded. When he turned on the light, she tried not to flinch at the sight of half a dozen cockroaches scurrying for their little safe house in the bottom of the toaster. She pulled up a chair and sat down. Marc filled up the kettle. As he moved to put it on the stove, he walked close by where Helen was sitting. Impulsively, she raised her hand and lightly stroked his back. He put the kettle down with a heavy hand; it clattered on the stove. Forgetting to turn it on, he returned to sit down in another chair, kitty-corner to hers. He could feel his cock rising once more to the occasion. Down boy, down, he commanded it vainly. Their knees were almost touching. She had a funny tight little smile on her face and was staring at her hands, which rested in her lap.
“Helen,” he began. She looked up and into his eyes.
The stern Ms. Analytical with her tight bun and severe suits began to make disapproving noises inside Helen’s brain. Don’t even think it, she warned her. You’ve gone quite far enough, young lady. Just then, the leggy bombshell who was her chief rival stormed over and decked her. With Ms. Analytical out for the count, Helen leaned across the corner of the table separating them and placed a little kiss on Marc’s lips. He blinked. Half rising out of his seat, he pushed his mouth against hers so hard she could feel her teeth pressing against her lip. She sensed the down of his light stubble against her skin; it almost tickled. While keeping up the pressure on her lips, he put his arms around her and tried to pull her closer, but the corner of the table stood between them. Helen opened her mouth a little bit, and he immediately responded, unhinging his jaws completely, as though trying to swallow her up. I haven’t been kissed like this since I was a teenager, Helen thought with a touch of nostalgia.
Without breaking contact, she levered herself up and negotiated the corner of the table. He pulled her to him while sitting back down. It was, however, a less than polished maneuver. The smooth soles of her new shoes slid on the linoleum and she came in for a rather clumsy landing on his lap. “Oof,” he cried, despite himself.
“Am I too heavy?” she whispered, embarrassed. Self-consciously, she redistributed her weight as best she could over his lean thighs while holding onto his neck.
“Not at all,” he whispered back, hugging and kissing her with a mad urgency that quite excited her. “You know, I’ve had a, I’ve, you know, you’re just. . . .” Marc sighed at his sudden inability to articulate. He felt like nearly all his blood had left his brain on a southern migration.
Something about the eager, almost clumsy way he was holding her, stroking her back, and putting his hands through her hair as they kissed told Helen he wasn’t very experienced, and she found this oddly thrilling. If the truckie had been a taste of full-on, all-Australian meat pie, Marc was more like googy egg on toast, nothing too complicated or heavy, just the sort of warm, comfortable thing you’d be happy waking up to. As his tongue searched out hers again, the thought suddenly crossed her mind: Could the yolk be still intact? He was what—twenty, twenty-one? Didn’t they all do it by the time they were fifteen these days? Lifting up the back of his T-shirt, she put her hand on his skin. It felt warm and almost impossibly smooth and silky. She slowly brought her hand around to caress the sleek, flat surface of his stomach and sweetly underdeveloped chest, upon which grew only a few stray hairs, a wee cluster in the center and several more around each nipple. She leaned down to kiss the delicate peaches of his areolas. She could feel his heart beat. He took her hand and lowered it to the bulge in his pants.
“Would you make love to me?” he croaked.
There was something touching about the combination of the formality of the request and the crack in his voice.
“Yes.”
She stood up and held out her hand. He wasn’t sure if he could stand up straight, but somehow, his arms around her the whole way, he managed to lead her to his bedroom, and they sank down onto his musty futon, side by side. Blushing, he took a condom out from the bedside table (he’d bought a pack that afternoon, just in case) and put it down on the bed. The act made him shy again and he pressed his face against hers and she felt its hot flush. He put his hand on her breast and, when she lay back on the bed, scrambled on top of her. Just as abruptly, he rolled off. He tore madly at her clothes, and then at his own, indecisive, wanting to stroke her and be stroked, to kiss and be kissed. They now both had their shirts off, and one of Helen’s breasts had escaped its lace bindings. Her skirt was above her waist, their shoes were off and she was working on his belt buckle when her rational self lifted her head off the floor. Ms. Analytical’s hair was disheveled, and her head spun. She made one last attempt to remind Helen of her ethical responsibilities. Just at that moment, along came Longlegs with a gag and masking tape. Jeez, you can be such a dill said Longlegs as she stuck in the gag and sealed her rival’s lips. You haven’t got a hope. It’s only a matter of a couple of centimeters now.
She tugged at his trousers and freed his stiff and straining cock from his briefs. It was bent slightly to the left. The phrase “tummy banana” jumped into her mind and, to hide the smile that had simultaneously leapt to her lips, she leaned over and kissed it. Licking the glans, she tongued the head playfully, briefly flicking at the vein before moving down to his balls. She noticed with a pang of tenderness how they still hung in their sack tight and close to his body. She sucked on them one at a time and tickled the area between his balls and anus with one hand while pulling on his cock with the other. When she took the length of it into her mouth and throat, Marc flopped backward onto the bed, utterly helpless, paralyzed, his entire consciousness, all of his senses, concentrated in the close, warm, wet, kinetic tunnel of her mouth. He had become the living embodiment of a principle he had so often denounced: phallocentricity.
Something of this seeped vaguely into his mind, to the extent that his mind was still relevant to the experience. The few brain cells still on active duty began screaming instructions at him like a drill sergeant: Don’t just lie there taking it! Do something! To her! Find the clitoris! Give foreplay lots of time! Pay attention to her nipples! Take it slow and build up the rhythm! Whatever you do, don’t come too fast! But his rioting hormones surged out of control and broke down the barricades of sexual etiquette. Squirming out of Helen’s grasp, he clawed off her underpants and spread her legs with his hands, rubbing blindly at the wet crevice he found there. Without further ado, he rolled on top and entered her. A zillion images flooded into his head: of mascarpone, of Sharon Stone, of steaming cannelloni, of lingerie, of Elle Macpherson, of stallions, of stamens, of Mal Meninga on a run, of Madonna on a gondola, of cocker spaniels, Mick Jagger’s lips, of ET, of wet T-shirt contests, of mangos, of his father swinging a golf club, of a platypus wriggling its way down a muddy river. Much to his horror, Beavis and Butthead provided the soundtrack, laughing: hehheh hehheh hehheh. His cock had traveled at last to that mysterious place he had long imagined but never known, traversing a terrain both foreign and familiar that was somehow traversing it at the same time. And it was Helen down there! His teacher! His obsession! This all had something to do with her! Suddenly, his balls tightened and the top of his head came off like the cap on a volcano. He spasmed, groaning, and collapsed with an abruptly clear mind upon the soft mound of Helen’s still writhing and sweaty body.
The whole event had lasted approximately nine minutes, including the five minutes that Helen had spent going down on Marc.
Helen’s realization that Marc had been a virgin tempered her disappointment. She found his innocent ineptness touching. She put her arms around him fondly and kissed the flushed cheek which lay astride her mouth.
Marc, however, was in turmoil. As his cock withered inside her, his brain snapped back into gear. Here was this woman he worshiped, whom in his fantasies he had pleasured in infinite ways, and he hadn’t managed to make her come even once. He had meant to
relish her like a banquet, and instead he’d scoffed her like fast food. He rolled off her in his shame. He got out of bed and began to throw on his clothes.
Helen sat up, surprised. “What are you—”
“No! No!” Marc cut her off. He waved his hands about his head and stamped his feet on the floor. “I can’t talk now!” he cried. He had so much to think about. He ran out of the house before the astonished Helen had the chance to say another word.
Pacing the streets of Newtown, one pigtail still tied up, the other laying flat on his head like a broken wing, Marc recoiled from the sight of groups of people his age, pissed or stoned, boys’ arms around girls, girls kissing boys, girls kissing girls, everyone laughing or shouting. They could have been from another planet. He went over the events of the evening a hundred times. He wanted to weep, though out of desperation or joy or embarrassment over his melodramatic departure he wasn’t sure. My God, he’d even forgotten the condom. For hours, he wandered.
After he left, Helen lay in his bed anxious and fretting until the alcohol and the emotional intensity of the evening took their toll, and she dozed off.
When he finally returned, panicked that she might have gotten up and gone, he was much relieved to see the full contour of her body under the duvet. One of her feet stuck out from the coverings. He stood in the doorway, gazing at her sleeping form and a happy calm settled on his mind. He went to pull the duvet over the stray foot. Its perfect beauty made his heart beat. Kicking off his boots, he quietly undressed and slipped back under the covers. Feeling for the curve of her body, he spooned it with his own.
Through her dreamy haze, Helen sensed his presence and hugged his arms close to her chest. Soon, she was feeling sexy again. She rolled over and, snuggling up against him, she kissed his forehead, nose, and chin. She could feel something stirring below.
Marc had half expected her to have fled by the time he returned. He certainly didn’t expect to be given a second chance. Not after that disappointing premiere performance, anyway. This time, he was going to do it right. He would not gobble his food. He would be a good student. He paid attention as his teacher showed him how to savor a kiss, and then, with her hand on his, how to tease and explore her pleasure zones. When she made to go down on him, however, he stopped her. That was a bit too exciting, and he needed to keep his wits about him this time.
