Virgins

by Caryl Rivers

  “Of course not.” (Well, I half-believed it. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It was very confusing.)

  “So?”

  “Well, I just don’t want to go out and give it away like it was free passes to the Silver Theater.”

  “Peggy, you’ve got to grow up. I mean, you’re nearly eighteen years old and you date a guy who’s going to be a priest.”

  “We neck!” I said defensively.

  “You’ll just have to come with me to New York, Peg. When I’m a writer I’ll have my lovers up to our apartment and you can have the ones I’m not using.”

  “You’re going to have more than one at a time?”

  “Why not? Men do it; why can’t we?”

  “I suppose we can,” I said. I thought of having a garret, and Sean could come up, when he took time off from being a priest, and he could be my lover. But I was sure even the Jesuits frowned on that, and they were pretty liberal. Con was right. I could use some experience. Here we were, talking about lovers, and all I could dredge up was Sean, Roman collar and all. I certainly wouldn’t want Go-Go Gunderson as a lover. I’d be trying to have a witty, literate conversation and he’d just be trying to stick his tongue in my ear.

  “Peg,” Con said. “Let’s make a pact. A sacred pact. Let’s promise that we’ll get an apartment in New York together the minute we graduate from college.”

  “Hey, that’s a great idea!”

  “You’ll be writing for the Herald Trib, and I’ll be writing “Talk of the Town” for The New Yorker. All the best men in town will be at our place. I’ll be standing there, and a handsome playwright will come up to me with a bag of peanuts, and he’ll offer me the bag, and he’ll say, ‘I wish they were emeralds!’”

  I looked at her. “Did you make that up?”

  “No. It’s what Charles MacArthur said to Helen Hayes the first time he met her.”

  “Holy shit. He said that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re right, Con. We don’t meet the right class of men hanging around Immaculate Heart High School.” (I remembered what Go-Go Gunderson said when he asked me out. “Hey! You! You busy Saturday?")

  “Will you do it? Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “No matter what happens. Even if Aly Khan asks you to marry him, you’ll say no?” Con threw her arms in the air, which jiggled her boobs considerably. “New York or Die!” she cried.

  I took the two water glasses from the sink and filled them up. I handed one to Con. “With the Sacred Water of Annapolis, we make our Vow,” I said. “New York.” We clinked the glasses together. I felt a flow of exultation flow through me. Con was going to be with me, in New York. How could I fail?

  “Hey, look at the time,” Con said. “We better get dressed.”

  We got out our gowns, and we struggled into our Merry Widows—wired and padded like Victorian corsets—and Con put on her peach tulle dress and I slid my blue taffeta over my head. She zipped me up and then I pulled up the zipper on the peach gown; it got caught in the fabric and there was panic for a minute, but I got it free.

  Con examined herself in the mirror. The peach dress showed off her pretty neck and shoulders, and there was enough cleavage to palpitate the heart of the Nemesis of Smut. But she was despondent as she looked in the full-length mirror.

  “I look like a cow. A peach-colored cow.”

  “You do not. You look beautiful.”

  “Why did I eat that Mars bar? It went right to my hips.”

  “Con, you look fine.”

  “You look super. You should always wear blue. It’s your color.”

  “Me and the B.V.M.,” I said. I started to sing: “I love a Lady in Blue. . .”

  Con chimed in: “And Dear Mother Mary, it’s You. . .”

  We both piped away, ‘When I look up to Your beautiful face/I see a mirror reflecting God’s Grace . . .”

  Then we both collapsed on the bed in giggles.

  “Ten’ll get you twenty it’s the first time that number’s been done in this place!” Con said.

  “Yeah, virgins of any kind are pretty rare around here.”

  When we had collected ourselves, we went downstairs to meet our dates. First Classman Lee Masters was Con’s Middie, and he turned out to be very tall, with a face that I thought was bland and unremarkable, but he did have a wonderful chin with a dimple in it, and blue eyes that seemed merry. Con took one look and couldn’t take her eyes away; she was staring at him the way the kids at Fatima must have looked at the Virgin—with a sort of unbelieving wonder. There’s trouble, I thought.

  My date, Harry Wexler, a yearling, did turn out to look a little like Tab Hunter. Not really my type, but handsome, and very dashing in his white dress uniform. And he was old, twenty-one at least. He introduced himself, very formally, and then he took my hand and we started down the street toward the yard and Bancroft Hall. My palms were starting to sweat. I mean, he was a man. How was I supposed to act? I knew how to act with boys. I grew up with Sean; I knew what he was thinking before he did. With Go-Go, all you had to do was give him a shove every time he tried to stick his tongue in the nearest available orifice. But Midshipman Harold (Harry) Wexler was different.

  I thought about an article I had read in the Ladies’ Home Journal called, “How to Talk to a Man and Make Him Fall in Love with You.” I didn’t want Harry Wexler to fall in love with me; I just wanted to convince him I wasn’t a deaf mute. The Journal said to talk about something you think the man would be interested in, not something you were interested in.

  “Uh,” I said, “what do you think of Senator McCarthy?” (Men liked politics, I thought.)

  “I think he’s a real patriotic American,” he said. “Don’t you?”

  I didn’t like him at all, even if he was a Catholic and was against communists. He had mean eyes, he was a bully, and he ruined the lives of innocent people. But the Journal said you should never disagree with a man.

  “Well,” I said, “he certainly is an American, all right.”

  So much for politics. We walked along in silence, and my palms were really sweating now. Frantically I searched for a topic of conversation. Hobbies! The Journal said to ask about a man’s hobbies.

  “Do you collect stamps?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Neither do I.”

  More silence.

  “Do you collect anything?” The desperation had to be echoing through my voice.

  “I used to, though.”

  (Thank You, God, thank You, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!)

  “Oh really? What?”

  “Bugs. I had a pretty good collection.”

  “Bugs? You mean like flies, things like that?”

  “Grasshoppers. I had eighteen species of grasshoppers.”

  “I used to like to catch grasshoppers when I was a kid. We used to have jumping contests with ‘em.”

  “We used to pull their back legs off, watch ‘em gimp around,” Harry said with a laugh.

  My blood ran cold. The idea of pulling the legs off a grasshopper made me sick. A shiver ran through me; Harry thought I was cold and he put his arm around me. I looked back at Con, who was still gazing up in a daze at Lee Masters, and I felt very much alone. Con was falling in love with Prince Charming, and I had to dance all night with a man who was into grasshoppercide. I wondered what other things he killed; I hoped he didn’t have anything against Catholics.

  But then Harry started to talk about the things he was studying, and it occurred to me that maybe grasshoppers were just an aberration. He didn’t display any other homicidal tendencies. I had a bad moment when he led me out to the dance floor, and my hands got really sweaty—thank God for the long white gloves—because I was never good at dancing. Guys told me I always tried to lead; too much basketball, I guess. But Harry was a good dancer, and I didn’t step on his toes, so I relaxed and even started to enjoy myself a little. Every now and then an image of
a grasshopper flopping around in the dust came to mind, but I quickly pushed it away.

  One nice thing about dancing with Harry was that you didn’t have to talk much when you were dancing; the midshipmen all seemed to be talking to each other anyway. When Harry danced by Lee, he’d say, “COMCIMPAC,” and then another midshipman would dance by and say, “COMCONATFT”; it was like dancing with a bunch of Martians speaking a whole other language. Con told me later it was a game with them, that they were making up letters for imaginary Naval Commands and they had to guess what the letters meant.

  When the band went out for a break, Con and I went to the ladies’ room, and she said to me, “For God’s sake, Peg, you should see the expression on your face when you’re dancing with Harry. You look like you’ve just been told you’re the next virgin that gets to be martyred.”

  “I’m having fun, Con, honest I am.”

  “Flirt with him, for heaven’s sake. Bat your eyelashes.”

  “Like this?”

  “Oh God, no. You look like you’ve got some nerve disease. Don’t you know how to flirt?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Peg, you have to learn how to be feminine. You’re pretty, but you’re a klutz.”

  “I am not. I have the best jump shot in the league.”

  “That’s what I mean. Men don’t like girls who do jump shots. They like girls who are dainty.”

  I laughed.

  “O.K., forget dainty. How about sultry?”

  I tried my Marilyn Monroe opened-mouth stare.

  “Scratch that one too,” Con said. “Peg, looking feminine does not mean you’re supposed to look like you’ve just had a lobotomy.”

  I got annoyed. “Let’s just forget about this whole thing, Con. I am doing just fine!”

  “Suit yourself,” she said.

  The band came back, and Harry and I danced some more, and then we drank some punch, and all in all the evening passed pleasantly enough.

  Then it was time for the last dance—after which the upperclassmen had two hours to get back to their dorms. I found myself walking very fast through the streets of Annapolis with Harry, and as we rounded a corner we saw a pair of familiar faces—Dolly and Marianne. Their dates, it turned out, were Harry’s best friends, and one of them had a relative with an apartment in town. He was away for the weekend and wasn’t using it. I looked back at Con and Lee, who were staring moonily into each other’s eyes, and I wondered about the wisdom of going to an unchaperoned apartment. But I figured it would be O.K. since Con was with me, because she could talk her way out of anything.

  But then Con, the rat-fink, double-crossed me.

  “We’re going to walk around for a bit. I want to show Constance around,” Lee said. He looked at Con. “How about it, hon?”

  Con just nodded dumbly. She would have nodded if he told her he was going to ship her off to a work camp in Vladivostok, that’s how smitten she was. So off they went, and there I was, alone with two fallen women, their paramours, and a man who pulled the legs off grasshoppers.

  We went into the apartment, and Dolly’s date got out some beers. Dolly and Marianne didn’t waste any time getting kissy-kissy with their Middies; Marianne draped herself all over one of the white uniforms and Dolly snuggled up to the other. Her midshipman guzzled his beer, and then very casually, as if it were nothing at all, put his hand right down the front of Dolly’s dress.

  I nearly choked on a swallow of Miller High Life. Nothing I had ever seen in my whole life shocked me so much; I felt as though I had just been air-dropped into Sodom and Gomorrah. I felt panicky; I wished Sean were there, with his illuminated Map of Sin so he could explain things to Dolly. I wished Con were there. I wanted Sister Justinian to materialize and grab Marianne and Dolly in her pterodactyl grip and explain to them that they were going to wind up toasting like marshmallows if they didn’t cease and desist immediately. I even wished for Father Clement Kliblicki to come barging in the door screaming, “Spawn of Satan!”

  And then Dolly and Marianne and their dates drifted off to the bedroom, leaving me and Harry alone on a couch with only one tiny little light on. He put his arms around me and I got as rigid as a corpse. But he just leaned over and kissed me gently, no tonsil-swab or anything, and he smelled of aftershave, a nice clean smell, and his lips were soft and warm and so I let him kiss me. I even unclenched my teeth after a while, and closed my eyes. We kissed like that for a while, and it was real nice, and then I noticed he was making a little humming noise in his throat, and his breathing was getting faster. I was surprised, because I didn’t know I was such a good kisser. I opened my eyes, and to my horror, I discovered that Harry had his hands on the front of my dress and was feeling away. I had no idea how long this had been going on. He didn’t know it, but he was getting all steamed up from an inch of foam rubber. I couldn’t feel a thing; for all I knew, Harry might as well have been groping a Squeegee Mop. I wondered about the theology of it all. It certainly wasn’t a sin for me, since I didn’t even know it was happening. Was it a sin for Harry, feeling up foam? But then, he was a Protestant, and the whole scale of sin was different for them.

  I pulled his hands away, and he didn’t protest, just kept on kissing me.

  He was still kissing very nicely, no caveman stuff, so I relaxed and closed my eyes again—which was my mistake.

  I realized I didn’t feel his arms around me anymore, but his hands weren’t on my foamy chest either, so I wondered where they were. I opened one eye, and I saw, with a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, that he had unzipped his fly, and what to my wondering eye did appear but the second actual penis I’d ever seen in my life.

  I couldn’t help staring at it; it was sticking straight out of his pants, and it was a lot bigger than Sean’s five-year-old one (though that must have grown a bit as well) and it looked so funny just sort of jutting through his pants that I couldn’t help giggling. Unfortunately, Harry mistook it for a cry of passion.

  “Oh baby, baby!” he said, and pulled my hand down between his legs. I yanked it away as if he’d been trying to hold my hand against a hot stove.

  “For heaven’s sake, put it away!” I said.

  “What?” he panted, not comprehending.

  “Your thing there. Put it back!”

  I was reverting to the language of my pup tent days. Somehow, it just seemed absurdly formal to refer to it as a penis in a situation like this. Ladies’ Home Journal did not deal with this conversational dilemma: “How to Talk to a Man Who Has Just Unzipped His Fly.”

  “My goodness, that’s certainly an interesting penis you have there.”

  “Why, thank you.”

  “Not at all. I’ve always been interested in the subject of penises. Have you?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “I’ve been thinking of collecting them. It might be a nice hobby. Speaking of hobbies, do you collect stamps?”

  But Harry didn’t seem interested in conversation. He said, “Oh baby, baby, kiss it!” and he tried to nudge my head down in the vicinity of his exposed member.

  “Oh my GOD!” I shrieked, jumping up and running back behind the couch. Harry looked at me, puzzled. Then he tried to climb over the couch and I doubled up my fist and I said, “Don’t you come near me, you—you grasshopper killer!”

  He blinked and said, “What the hell is going on?”

  Just then there was a moan from the bedroom. Dolly’s voice. That didn’t help things at all.

  “You think I’m just going to sit there and let you paw me?”

  “Oohhhhhhhhh!” Dolly said, from the bedroom.

  “Oh for God’s sake, Peg, what’s this quivering virgin act?”

  “More! More!” Dolly groaned. I wanted to go in and bludgeon her to death with her high-heeled shoes. Let’s see if she’d yell “more” as I mashed the high heel into her left nostril. But then the impact of what Harry had just said hit me right in the stomach.

>   “Act?” I said. “What act?”

  “You put out for half of West Point; what the hell’s wrong with me?”

  “What?”

  “Harder, harder!” Dolly yelled.

  “Babe, I’ll make you forget there ever was an Army,” Harry said.

  “Who told you about West Point?” I asked.

  “Dolly told me how you’d been bragging about how many of those Army jerks you’d been with. Come on, let me show you how we do things the Navy way!”

  “Ohhhhhhhhhh!” Dolly said. Not only was she a harlot but a blabbermouth as well. I thought of stuffing a magnolia down her throat until she choked to death.

  “Come on, babe, you’ll love it!” Harry said, and he made another lunge at me.

  I darted away and I said, “Harry, honest to God, I’ve never been to West Point! I’ve never even been north of Philadelphia!” I added, “My cousin lives there. Second cousin, once removed.”

  “Fuck me! Fuck me!” Dolly said.

  Harry looked at me, perplexed. His penis had deflated too, I noticed.

  “But all that stuff about West Point—”

  “We were just kidding.”

  “You mean you really are a virgin?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I am.”

  “Oh shit,” he said. He looked so miserable that I felt a pang of sympathy for him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Well,” he said, “I guess you can’t help what you are.”

  “It’s not that I don’t like you. If I wasn’t—you know—I’d do it with you, I really would.”

  “You sure you don’t want to—change your status?” he said.

  “No, I’m only a senior in high school. I think I ought to stay a virgin a little longer.”

  “Well, sure, that makes sense,” he said. He really was being decent about it. “Come on, I’ll walk you back to the drag house.”

  We walked back in silence, and when we got to the door he said, “I didn’t really kill a lot of them. Grasshoppers. And I was only a kid.”

  “I’m sorry I called you a killer,” I said. “I think you’re very nice, really.”

  He leaned over and kissed me goodnight, gently, and then he walked off.