The Reluctant Exhibitionist

by Martin Shepard

  And damned if it didn’t work. Julie did well with me. As she once put it, “knowing you were flesh and blood, seeing you as imperfect in many ways, made it easier to relate with and listen to you. Every other therapist I had I placed on some pedestal. And most of the time I felt more impelled to look for their flaws than to accept what they had to say. I had to prove I was as smart as they were in order to feel worthwhile.”

  As her psyche opened, so did her cunt.

  Once, about a month after she began coming to my group, this friend/patient comforted me while Eivor was out making it with another man. As a fuck, it was rather tight-assed and unspectacular, above and beyond the stiffness that often attends first fucks. But as a loving, generous, unquestioning gesture, it was incomparable.

  Some months later we fucked while tripping on mescaline. How profoundly beautiful that was. We lay there on the floor, which soon became a cloud. Then the cloud disappeared, leaving us floating in the vastness of the universe. With neither up nor down, top nor bottom, ceiling nor floor, we were lost in space, out in the heavens, knowing noOne or noThing except one another. Wordlessly, peering deeply into each other’s eyes, we entered each other from the inside out, she becoming me, I her, we becoming one.

  Every cell of my body had an intelligence of its own, a sensuality unto itself, an individual cellular orgasm. Time stood still. Now was forever. The merging was so complete, my flesh was so alive, that the coming from my prick was unnecessary. Snowflakes crystallizing out of water. Diamonds out of coal. And it was over.

  We had touched souls. Whatever courses our lives would take in the future, this special kinship would never be erased.

  About half a year ago, Julie stopped attending my group. Therapy was over. She was studying to become a therapist herself.

  We fucked again on that occasion. It was then that she taught me a great lesson about the paradox of sadomasochism.

  There is a story about a meeting between a sadist and a masochist:

  “Whip me. Please whip me,” asked the cringing sufferer.

  “No, I won’t,” answered his cruel tormenter.

  Julie always had this spastic, tentatively clutching quality when we screwed. I had always presumed it to be a sign of her uncertainty, something that a most tender and benevolent lover could help her overcome. Yet my exceptional gentleness never did the trick.

  That night we smoked some pot, and while inside of her, I began to respond to her fitful grabbing by squeezing back. She answered this roughness with fervor, panting more heavily, digging her fingers into my back with intense commitment, while banging, shoving and hitting her cunt and pelvic bones against me. Her ambivalence seemed to vanish. I was fucking in a way that I had never fucked before. I suddenly flashed her desire to be overwhelmed, to be torn asunder, to have her ass grabbed and pulled, to have me sink my fingers deeply into the flesh of her thighs, to have me pull wildly on her breasts, to have me bite and bang and sock cock in. I hesitated. It seemed cruel. Wasn’t gentleness more loving?

  Yet what kinder gesture was I capable of than giving her what she wanted? And so, against my scruples, against my aesthetic sensibilities, I went with her flow and beat and banged and bit and tore against her flesh until she joyously burst. And I as well.

  It was by far the best fuck we had ever had together. And I learned that love hid behind such apparent “cruelty.”

  While the workshop began on Friday evening, Julie did not arrive until yesterday afternoon. She came to help out the Anthos house staff, to say hello to me, and to watch some other therapists at work.

  I had found myself in a bit of a bind all weekend. Celia had signed on for this second workshop with me. That in itself made me feel uncomfortable. To fuck on the spur of the moment, as we did last month, when the vibrations seemed right, was one thing. But to have a woman pursue me is another.

  I didn’t want to hurt anyone, let alone Celia. Certainly, I liked fucking. But not if it unloosed a Pandora’s box of unrealistic fantasies, desires, and expectations in my partner. I was afraid now that my earlier ball with Celia had done just that. I thought of fucking as an act of joy, desire, comfort, and/or simple pleasure. Not something to get hung-up on or sticky about. So caught up was I in the power and attractiveness of my cock that I presumed it to be the one and only reason that Celia had come. I had visions of her sadly following me about in the months and years ahead. That being the case, I was determined not to give her my dick again, lest things become even more complex.

  Yet, by Saturday evening, it was beginning to dawn on me that perhaps my standoffishness was unfair. If Celia was seeing me for my professional competence, fucking would simply be a pleasant icing on the cake. And not to fuck, after our previous juicy encounter, would be offering her a gratuitous insult. I brooded.

  After last night’s session ended I went downstairs to see Julie. I asked her if she’d like to join me for a smoke. Yes, she would.

  I walked outside to look for Dave. He’d have some grass to lay on me. On the way I met Celia.

  “You’ve been acting so distant. What’s the matter?”

  I told her what I had been thinking.

  “You’re wrong,” she answered. “Of course I’d like to go to bed with you. You’re a very sensual man. That, and your intelligence, your skillfulness in the group, are the things I like best about you. What I like least is your unnecessary defensiveness. Your feeling that you’ve got to protect yourself from me, or me from you. Your presumptuousness about my psyche.”

  I felt a bit ashamed of myself. And more than willing now to give her my flesh. But Julie was waiting for me.

  “Would you like to join us?”

  “No,” she replied. “I don’t particularly like Julie. If it were someone else, yes. But not her.”

  “Well … I’ve already committed myself for the night. Suppose I come by your room early in the morning to wake you up?”

  That was fine with her.

  I found Dave, got the grass, and returned with Julie to my room. With some women, my sexual pleasure is enhanced when I’m stoned. With others, it is better to enter soberly. Julie falls into that first category.

  Dave’s grass was exceptionally good. Before we even got to the end of our cigarettes, we were flying in that never-never land of timelessness and warm skin. Sitting on the bed, the room illuminated by the hall light falling gently through the transom window, we stared at one another. Then, like actors in a slow-motion film, we started to undress.

  We froze there, nakedly, for what seemed like an eternity, and then slowly let ourselves down upon the bed. Julie lay still, on her back. I was stretched alongside her, my face resting on her belly.

  My fingers moved, glided, barely touched her skin, her thigh, her tuft of hair, and then more firmly began to enter her. Her cunt was dry and tight. But I pushed insistently in with my index finger. The burning pain of dry skin against dry pussy began to excite her and her legs stirred, clamping about my wrist, only to release it momentarily. As my finger probed ever more deeply, I felt all of my consciousness enter into it.

  I was inside of a cave whose walls were hot and dry and trembled from time to time. Ridges and furrows of pursed up flesh surrounded me. I thrust against the wall to feel the sinews and strength of muscles and bone beyond.

  She was heaving and sighing now. The mouth of the entrance relaxed some more. Oily, sweet-smelling beads of cunt-wall juice formed amidst those crevices. I pushed a second finger in.

  She groaned from pain and pleasure as the two fingers began to dance inside of her, stretching the walls this way and that—flatter and flatter, wetter and wetter. Again the entrance way fell limper still.

  My third finger now went inside, opening her as wide as she seemed capable of. Once more a gasp. Again more dilatation. My hand and my fingers began to make long, circular arcs inside of her, feeling and touching every hidden spot inside that secret vault, which now ballooned out over its narrow, pried-open neck, its black vacuum sucking my fi
ngers ever more deeply in, while my free hand entered her mouth to explore that other sacred cavern.

  She was sucking on my hands from above and below when I placed my fourth and smallest finger into her torn-open cunt. The pleasure was more than she could bear and she kept coming and coming and coming.

  She was fully opened now; I pulled my hands out of mouth and cunt. Julie’s small hole was ready to accommodate an army.

  Stiff with desire and love, I moved about on top of her, stretched her legs painfully/pleasurably apart, and sank my prick deeply inside of her.

  And then we played a dance of alterations. Pulling and yanking her apart until she came, then—in her quietness and relaxedness—moving ever so slowly, gently and lovingly until she came again. Over and over. Her trip and mine. Rough and smooth. Enjoying them both. The two of us. Until, with one last surge, I literally exploded into her depths.

  I was totally cleansed, totally cleared out. Each ride with Julie this past year, as infrequent as they were, was so incredibly good. And yet the next one was unbelievably better.

  We had come a long way together and taught each other much. Spent, I fell asleep in her arms.

  At seven in the morning, I quietly arose from my bed, careful not to awaken my beloved friend, and made my way to Celia’s waiting arms.

  Sunday night, August 16

  I left the retreat immediately after an early lunch, stopped at my parents’ home to give my dad a birthday gift, and then headed for the Hamptons. I was surprised at the fast time I was making, driving in those early afternoon hours before the vacationers started their Sunday pilgrimage back to the city.

  I pulled into our driveway. Someone else’s car was in my place. An early evening visitor? Perhaps.

  I could see a long-haired, moustachioed, goateed man framed in the living room window. He looked unfamiliar. Eivor saw my car pull in and came out to meet me.

  “How are you?” she smiled her ex-stewardess smile as she kissed me. It was stiff, formal, routine. “I didn’t expect you for another few hours.”

  I removed my overnight bag from my car. “Phillip’s been visiting over the weekend. Come on in and say hello.”

  So that was it. Mouse Phillip came to play while the cat was away.

  I went upstairs to greet him.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  We shook hands. He had changed considerably since I last saw him. From a nice Jewish boy to a member of the counter-culture. Yet I suspected his new appearance was deceiving.

  Eivor and I had met Phillip at a psychological workshop that the three of us attended this past winter. During a psychodrama, Eivor had played his mother. Apparently it was love at first sight. They met again at a group reunion party a month later. I was unable to attend. He was aware of our open sexual experimentation. Otherwise I doubt that he would have had the courage to come on to a married woman.

  They had been seeing each other all spring. At first I didn’t mind. But then, when Eivor began to turn me away, it started to get to me. I would come home late at night and want to fuck.

  “I’m too tired tonight,” she would say, rolling over on her side to go to sleep. Too tired for me, but not too tired to stay out until one or two in the morning with Phillip.

  The other thing that bothered me was their sense of privacy. I was not to be admitted. I was not even allowed to have Phillip’s home phone number, so that I might reach Eivor in case of emergency. “Phillip would feel very uncomfortable if you ever called me there,” she would say. Phillip would feel uncomfortable. Fuck Phillip. What about my sense of comfort?

  Every time I balled another woman, it primed me for my wife. Every time Eivor fucked Phillip, she would keep me at bay for several days. To keep me from sullying the memories of his prick nestling inside of her?

  So I was disturbed when I saw him. I could see a shitty cycle beginning afresh. I thought they had stopped seeing each other. Maybe that’s why Eivor proposed not sharing our transgressions any longer.

  The secrecy of his visit made me feel betrayed, left out, laughed at, cuckolded. Yet my sense of fairness was also operating. Hadn’t I been sexually milked dry this weekend? Did I bother informing Eivor about it? And I certainly wasn’t laughing behind her back. I was simply doing my own thing. I had to admit a certain admiration for Eivor in this, too. For her audacity. For her lustiness. Even, perhaps, for her treachery.

  As uncomfortable as I was feeling, though, I knew that Phillip must be feeling worse. I had caught him in a spot he never wished me to intrude upon. And damn it if I wasn’t going to show both him and Eivor that I could be a decent host—that I could act toward her lover the way I would have liked her to act toward mine.

  So I attempted to be pleasant. I asked about his summer.

  It was fine. He had toured Europe.

  How did he like the Hamptons?

  Fine. He had been in the area once before. The beach was lovely. He played catch with Marc and Richard.

  He went out of his way to volunteer that he had slept in the guest room. Big deal.

  We chatted about patients we knew in common; Phillip too was a psychiatrist. I fixed him a drink.

  Eivor asked me if I’d like to join them for dinner.

  “No. I knew you weren’t expecting me, so I had something on the road.”

  I watched them eat. Like some happily married couple and I the bachelor friend. He politely ordered her around. “More beer please.… The steak isn’t well-done enough. Could you cook it some more? … Do you have a sharper knife?” And she met all of his requests. None of those “do it yourself” responses that husbands so often get. Well, after all, she did play his mother.

  But the forced conversation was becoming more and more of an effort. I broke out some grass and began to smoke. Puff after puff after puff. It helped, but the atmosphere was still not right. At last, as so often happens, the drug cleared and cooled my mind sufficiently so that I could see the obvious and grapple intelligently with the situation.

  “You know,” I said, relighting my water pipe, “the fact of the matter is that I’m very uncomfortable. Here we are, talking politely about people we know in common, and yet not one of us has dared bring up the most obvious reality that affects us. Namely, my coming home early and being with the two of you. And I suspect that the two of you also feel the tension.”

  “Not me,” said Eivor. “I’m rather enjoying myself.”

  But Phillip copped to it, and suddenly the air seemed lighter to breathe. It was getting late. We talked some more. He had to leave shortly.

  “You can stay until the morning and drive in then. The traffic will be less heavy,” I offered in my hostly fashion.

  “Yes. Why don’t you?” asked Eivor.

  But no. He had to get back tonight. I was glad of that.

  Then, just before he left, I felt this great aching, sinking, expanding emptiness in my belly.

  I rushed to the bathroom, bent over the bowl, and puked.

  Monday, August 17

  I feel ill. Can’t eat. Eivor’s very unsympathetic. She’s back on her Phillip cycle.

  Went to the post office and received a letter from Julie. It read:

  Without qualifying or modifying, and without giving orders (how can I jump to all those places in your mind and anticipate? I can’t), I somehow want to say that this letter is a slip into the cosmic secret. I’m sending it to your office because I don’t know your other address. Maybe it will be forwarded before I see you. Maybe not.

  It doesn’t matter how the timing goes with my seeing you and the letter. I just realize that.

  I love you.

  Called you once yesterday when you were out—to tell you that I love you. You have helped me open so many possibilities inside of me, without my knowing it.

  But maybe it’s magic synchronicity that you were out—because the phone call yesterday was still the disciple saying, “Thank you, Doctor, for what you’ve done.”

  Then this morning,
sitting out on the porch, something else came to me, or unified, or hit me over the head like a hammer.

  It was that you are—all that you are, all that you aren’t. Including my own experience of you—and experience of places in you that you want to keep secret. I don’t even know what they are, those secrets, and that is a part of knowing you.

  For me and my knowing you, it is the most important thing.

  It was so lovely, so poignant. I was so touched.…

  Tuesday, August 18

  The nausea is overwhelming: I’ve lost five pounds. Whenever I try to eat there are pains and then vomiting. Even drinking water is an ordeal. My stomach growls incessantly. There are also bouts of diarrhea.

  Today I discovered enlarged lymph nodes under my arms. Plus a low-grade fever. I’m afraid I’ve got something quite seriously wrong with me.

  It’s obviously a systemic disease. No simple bellyache this. Since it involves the lymphatic system, I’d guess the differential diagnosis would include mononucleosis, hepatitis, or a type of leukemia. No sense going to the doctor’s now. My own medical training told me that the first two illnesses cure themselves. All you need do is avoid aggravating them. The last one is inevitably fatal.

  Wouldn’t it be funny if they discovered, one day, that some forms of leukemia are venereal in origin?

  Wednesday, August 19

  Had to drive into the city today to approve final cuts on an incredibly inept, unreal, and boring group-encounter film, Like You, Like Me, that I was involved in making. If I had a greater sense of shame I suppose I would have attempted to block its processing entirely. Instead, I decided to let it pass as an accurate portrayal of a dismal and uninspiring afternoon.