by Frank Harris
«Why?» I asked. «Tell truth,» I warned her, and she began.
«I'll tell you anything; I thought the time had something to do with it, for soon after I am well each month, my 'pussy,' that's what we call it, often burns and itches intolerably; but, after a week or so, I'm not bothered any more till next time. Why is that?» she added.
«Two things I ought to explain to you,» I said. «Your seed is brought down into your womb by the menstrual blood; it lives there a week or ten days and then dies, and with its death your desires decrease and the chance of impregnation. But near the next monthly period, say within three days, there is a double danger again; for the excitement may bring your seed down before the usual time, and in any case my seed will live in your womb about three days, so if you wish to avoid pregnancy, wait for ten days after your monthly flow is finished and stop, say four days before you expect it again; then the danger of getting a child is very slight.» «Oh, you wise boy!» she laughed. «Don't you see you are skipping the time I most desire you, and that's not kind to either of us, is it?» «There's still another way of evasion,» I said, «get me to withdraw before I come the first time, or get up immediately and syringe yourself with water thoroughly; water kills my seed as soon as it touches it.» 'But how will that help if you go on half a dozen times more?» she asked.
«Doctors say,» I replied, «that what comes from me afterward is not virile enough to impregnate a woman: I'll explain the process to you if you like; but you can take it, the fact is as I state it.» «When did you learn all this?» she asked. «It has been my most engrossing study,» I laughed, «and by far the most pleasureful!»
«You dear, dear,» she cried. «I must kiss you for that.» «Do you know you kiss wonderfully?» she went on reflectingly. «With a lingering touch of the inside of the lips and then the thrust of the tongue: that's what excited me so the first time,» and she sighed, as if delighted with the memory. «You didn't seem excited,» I said half reproachfully, «for when I wanted another kiss, you drew away and said 'Tomorrow'! Why are women so coquettish, so perverse?» I added, remembering Lucille and Jessie. «I think it is that we wish to be sure of being desired,» she replied, «and a little, too, that we want to prolong the joy of it, the delight of being wanted, really wanted!
It is so easy for us to give and so exquisite to feel a man's desire pursuing us! Ah, how rare it is,» she sighed passionately, «and how quickly lost! You'll soon tire of your mistress,» she added, «now that I am all yours and thrill only for you,» and she took my head in her hands and kissed me passionately, regretfully. «You kiss better than I do, Lorna! Where did you acquire the art, Madame?» I asked. «I fear that you have been a naughty, naughty girl!» «If you only knew the truth,» she exclaimed, «if you only knew how girls long for a lover and burn and itch in vain and wonder why men are so stupid and cold and dull as not to see our desire. «Don't we try all sorts of tricks? Aren't we haughty and withdrawn at one moment and affectionate, tender, loving at another? Don't we conceal the hook with every sort of bait, only to watch the fish sniff at it and turn away. Ah, if you knew-I feel a traitor to my sex even in telling you- if you guessed how we angle for you and how clever we are, how full of wiles. There's an expression I once heard my husband use which described us women exactly, or nine out of ten of us. I wanted to know how he kept the office warm all night: he said, we damp down the furnaces, and explained the process. That's it, I cried to myself, I'm a damped-down furnace: that's surely why I keep hot ever so long! Did you imagine,» she asked, turning her flower-face all pale with passion half aside, «that I took off my hat that first day before the glass and turned slowly round with it held above my head, by chance? You dear innocent! I knew the movement would show my breasts and slim hips and did it deliberately, hoping it would excite you, and how I thrilled when I saw it did. «Why did I show you the bed in that room,» she added, «and leave the door ajar when I came back here to the sofa but to tempt you, and how heart-glad I was to feel your desire in your kiss. I was giving myself before you pushed my head back on the sofa-arm and disarranged all my hair!» she added, pouting and patting it with her hands to make sure it was in order. «You were astonishingly masterful and quick,» she went on, «how did you know that I wished you to touch me then? Most men would have gone on kissing and fooling, afraid to act decisively. You must have had a lot of experience? You naughty lad!» «Shall I tell you the truth?» I said. «I will, just to encourage you to be frank with me. You are the first woman I have ever spent my seed in or had properly.» «Call it improperly, for God's sake,» she cried laughing aloud with joy,
«you darling virgin, you! Oh! how I wish I was sixteen again and you were my first lover. You would have made me believe in God. Yet you are my first lover,» she added quickly. «I have only learned the delight and ecstasy of love in your arms.» Our love-talk lasted for hours till suddenly I guessed it was late and looked at my watch; it was nearly seven-thirty: I was late for supper, which started at half-past six! «I must go,» I exclaimed, «or I'll get nothing to eat.» «I could give you supper,» she added, «my lips, too, that long for you and -and-but you know.» She added regretfully, «He might come in and I want to know you better first before seeing you together; a young god and a man!-and the man God's likeness, yet so poor an imitation!» «Don't, don't,» I said, «you'll make life harder for yourself-» «Harder,» she repeated with a sniff of contempt. «Kiss me, my love, and go if you must. Shall I see you tomorrow? There!» she cried as with a curse, «I've given myself away:
I can't help it; oh, how I want you always: how I shall long for you and count the dull dreary hours! Go, go or I'll never let you-» and she kissed and clung to me to the door. «Sweet-tomorrow!» I said, and tore off. Of course it is manifest that my liaison with Mrs.
Mayhew had little or nothing to do with love. It was demoniac youthful sex-urge in me and much the same hunger in her, and as soon as the desire was satisfied my judgment of her was as impartial, cool as if she had always been indifferent to me. But with her I think there was a certain attachment and considerable tenderness. In intimate relations between the sexes it is rare indeed that the man gives as much to love as the woman.
Chapter X. Some Study, More Love
Supper at the Gregorys' was almost over when I entered the dining room: Kate and her mother and father and the boy Tommy were seated at the end of the table, taking their meal. The dozen guests had all finished and disappeared. Mrs. Gregory hastened to rise and Kate got up to follow her mother into the neighboring kitchen. «Please don't get up!» I cried to the girl. «I'd never forgive myself for interrupting you. I'll wait on myself or on you,» I added smiling, «if you wish anything.» She looked at me with hard, indifferent eyes and sniffed scornfully. «If you sit there,» she said, pointing to the other end of the table, «I'll bring your supper; do you take coffee or tea?» «Coffee, please,» I answered, and took the seat indicated, at once making up my mind to be cold to her while winning the others. Soon the boy began asking me had I ever seen any Indians-«In war-paint and armed, I mean,» he added eagerly.
«Yes, and shot at them, too,» I replied smiling. Tommy's eyes gleamed. «Oh, tell us!» he panted, and I knew I could always count on one good listener! «I've lots to tell, Tommy,» I said.
«But now I must eat my supper at express rate, or your sister'll be angry-» I added, as Kate came in with some steaming food: she pulled a face and shrugged her shoulders with contempt. «Where do you preach?» I asked the grey-haired father. «My brother says you're really eloquent.» «Never eloquent,» he replied deprecatingly,
«but sometimes very earnest, perhaps, especially when some event of the day comes to point the Gospel story.» He talked like a man of fair education and I could see he was pleased at being drawn to the front.
Then Kate brought me fresh coffee, and Mrs. Gregory came in and continued her meal; and the talk became interesting, thanks to Mr.
Gregory, who couldn't help saying how the fire in Chicago had stimulated Christianity in
his hearers and given him a great text. I mentioned casually that I had been in the fire and told of Randolph Street Bridge and the hanging and what else I saw there and on the lake-front that unforgettable Monday morning. At first Kate went in and out of the room, removing dishes as if she were not concerned in the story, but when I told of the women and girls half-naked at the lakeside, while the flames behind us reached the zenith in a red sheet that kept throwing flame-arrows ahead and started the ships burning on the water in front of us, she, too, stopped to listen. At once I caught my cue, to be liked and admired by all the rest, but indifferent, cold to her. I rose, as if her standing enthralled had interrupted me, and said: «I'm sorry to keep you: I've talked too much, forgive me!» and betook myself to my room in spite of the protests and prayers to continue of all the rest. Kate just flushed, but said nothing. She attracted me greatly: she was infinitely desirable, very good looking and very young (only sixteen, her mother said later), and her great hazel eyes were almost as exciting as her pretty mouth or large lips and good height. She pleased me intimately, but I resolved to win her altogether and felt I had begun well: at any rate, she would think about me and mycoldness. I spent the evening in putting out my half-dozen books, not forgetting my medical treatises, and then slept the deep sleep of sex recuperation. The next morning I called on Smith again, where he lived with the Reverend Mr. Kellogg, who was the Professor of English History in the university, Smith said. Kellogg was a man of about forty, stout and well kept, with a faded wife of about the same age. Rose, the pretty servant, let me in; I had a smile and warm word of thanks for her: she was astonishingly pretty, the prettiest girl I had seen in Lawrence: medium height and figure with quite lovely face and an exquisite rose-leaf skin! She smiled at me; evidently my admiration pleased her.
Smith, I found, had got books for me, Latin and Greek-English dictionaries, a Tacitus, too, and Xenophon's Memorabilia with a Greek grammar: I insisted on paying for them all and he began to talk.
Tacitus he just praised for his superb phrases and the great portrait of Tiberius- «perhaps the greatest historical portrait ever painted in words.» I had a sort of picture of King Edward the Fourth in my romantic head, but didn't venture to trot it out. But soon, Smith passed to Xenophon and his portrait of Socrates as compared with that of Plato. I listened all ears while he read out a passage from Xenophon, painting Socrates with little human touches: I got him to translate every word literally and had a great lesson, resolving, when I got home, I'd learn the whole page by heart. Smith was more than kind to me: he said I'd be able to enter the junior class and thus have only two years to graduation. If Willie gave me back even five hundred dollars, I'd 6e able to get through without care or work.
Then Smith told me how he had gone to Germany after his American Diversity: how he had studied there and then worked in Athens at ancient Greek for another year till he could talk classic Greek as easily as German. «There were a few dozen professors and students,» he said, «who met regularly and talked nothing but classic Greek: they were always trying to make the modern tongue just like the old.» He gave me a translation of Das Kapital of Marx, and in fifty ways inspired and inspirited me to renewed effort. I came back to the Gregorys' for dinner and discussed in my own mind whether I should go to Mrs. Mayhew's, as I had promised, or work at Greek. I decided to work and then and there made a vow always to prefer work, a vow more honored in the breach, I fear, than in the observance. But at least I wrote to Mrs. Mayhew, excusing myself, and promising her the next afternoon. I set myself to learn by heart the two pages in the Memorabilia. That evening I sat near the end of the table; the head of it was taken by the university professor of physics, a dull pedant! Every time Kate came near me I was ceremoniously polite:
«Thank you, very much! It is very kind of you!» and not a word more.
As soon as I could, I went to my room to work. Next day at three o'clock I knocked at Mrs. Mayhew's: she opened the door herself. I cried, «How kind of you!» and once in the room drew her to me and kissed her time and time again: she seemed cold and numb. For some moments she didn't speak, then: «I feel as if I had passed through fever,» she said, putting her hands through her hair, lifting it in a gesture I was to know well in the days to come. «Never promise again if you don't come; I thought I should go mad: waiting is a horrible torture! Who kept you-some girl?» and her eyes searched mine.
I excused myself; but her intensity chilled me. At the risk of alienating my girl readers, I must confess this was the effect her passion had on me. When I kissed her, her lips were cold. But by the time we had got upstairs, she had thawed. She shut the door after us gravely and began: «See how ready I am for you!» and in a moment she had thrown back her robe and stood before me naked. She tossed the garment on a chair; it fell on the floor. She stooped to pick it up with her bottom toward me: I kissed her soft bottom and caught her up by it with my hand on her sex. She turned her head over her shoulder: «I've washed and scented myself for you, Sir: how do you like the perfume? and how do you like this bush of hair?» and she touched her mount with a grimace. «I was so ashamed of it as a girl: I used to shave it off, that's what made it grow so thick, I believe.
One day my mother saw it and made me stop shaving. Oh! how ashamed of it I was: it's animal, ugly,-don't you hate it? Oh, tell the truth!» she cried, «Or rather, don't; tell me you love it.» «I love it,» I exclaimed, «because it's yours!» «Oh, you dear lover,» she smiled, «you always find the right word, the flattering salve for the sore!» «Are you ready for me,» I asked, «ripe-ready, or shall I kiss you first and caress pussy?» «Whatever you do will be right,» she said. «You know I am rotten-ripe, soft and wet for you always!» All this while I was taking off my clothes; now I too was naked. «I want you to draw up your knees,» I said: «I want to see the Holy of Holies, the shrine of my idolatry.» At once she did as I asked. Her legs and bottom were well-shaped without being statuesque: but her clitoris was much more than the average button: it stuck out fully half an inch and the inner lips of her vulva hung down a little below the outer lips. I knew I should see prettier pussies.
Kate's was better shaped, I felt sure, and the heavy, madder-brown lips put me off a little. The next moment I began caressing her red clitoris with my hot, stiff organ: Lorna sighed deeply once or twice and her eyes turned up; slowly I pushed my prick in to the full and drew it out again to the lips, then in again, and I felt her warm love-juice gush as she drew up her knees even higher to let me further in. «Oh, it's divine,» she sighed, «better even than the first time,» and, when my thrusts grew quick and hard as the orgasm shook me, she writhed down on my prick as I withdrew, as if she would hold it, and as my seed spirted into her, she bit my shoulder and held her legs tight as if to keep my sex in her. We lay a few moments bathed in bliss. Then, as I began to move again to sharpen the sensation, she half rose on her arm. «Do you know,» she said, «I dreamed yesterday of getting on you and doing it to you, do you mind if I try?» «No, indeed!» I cried. «Go to it, I am your prey!» She got up smiling and straddled kneeling across me, and put my cock into her pussy and sank down on me with a deep sigh. She tried to move up and down on my organ and at once came up too high and had to use her hand to put my Tommy in again; then she sank down on it as far as possible. «I can sink down all right,» she cried, smiling at the double meaning, «but I cannot rise so well! What fools we women are, we can't master even the act of love; we are so awkward!» «Your awkwardness, however, excites me,» I said. «Does it?» she cried. «Then I'll do my best,» and for some time she rose and sank rhythmically; but, as her excitement grew, she just let herself lie on me and wiggled her bottom till we both came. She was flushed and hot and I couldn't help asking her a question. «Does your excitement grow to a spasm of pleasure,» I asked, «or do you go on getting more and more excited continually?» «I get more and more excited,» she said, «till the other day with you, for the first time in my life, the pleasure became unbearably intense and I was hysterical, you wonder-lover!» Sin
ce then I have read lascivious books in half a dozen languages and they all represent women coming to an orgasm in the act, as men do, followed by a period of content; which only shows that the books are all written by men, and ignorant, insensitive men at that. The truth is: hardly one married woman in a thousand is ever brought to her highest pitch of feeling; usually, just when she begins to feel, her husband goes to sleep. If the majority of husbands satisfied their wives occasionally, the woman's revolt would soon move to another purpose: women want above all a lover who lives to excite them to the top of their bent. As a rule, men through economic conditions marry so late that they have already half-exhausted their virile power before they marry. And when they marry young, they are so ignorant and self-centered that they imagine their wives must be satisfied when they are. Mrs. Mayhew told me that her husband had never excited her, really. She denied that she had ever had any real acute pleasure from his embraces. «Shall I make you hysterical again?» I asked, out of boyish vanity. «I can, you know!» «You mustn't tire yourself!» she warned. «My husband taught me long ago that when a woman tires a man, he gets a distaste for her, and I want your love, your desire, dear, a thousand times more even than the delight you give me-»
«Don't be afraid,» I broke in. «You are sweet; you couldn't tire me; turn sideways and put your left leg up, and I'll just let my sex caress your clitoris back and forth gently; every now and then I'll let it go right in until our hairs meet.» I kept on this game perhaps half an hour until she first sighed and sighed and then made awkward movements with her pussy which I sought to divine and meet as she wished, when suddenly she cried: «Oh! Oh! Hurt me, please! hurt me, or I'll bite you! Oh God, oh, oh,» panting, breathless till again the tears poured down! «You darling,» she sobbed. «How you can love! Could you go on forever?» For answer, I put her hand on my sex. «Just as naughty as ever,» she exclaimed, «and I am choking, breathless, exhausted! Oh, I'm sorry,» she went on, «but we should get up, for I don't want my help to know or guess: niggers talk-» I got up and went to the windows; one gave on the porch, but the other directly on the garden. «What are you looking at?» she asked, coming to me. «I was just looking for the best way to get out if ever we were surprised,» I said. «If we leave this window open I can always drop into the garden and get away quickly.» «You would hurt yourself,» she cried. «Not a bit of it,» I answered. «I could drop half as far again without injury; the only thing is, I must have boots on and trousers, or those thorns of yours would gip!» «You boy,» she exclaimed laughing. «I think after your strength and passion, it is your boyishness I love best»-and she kissed me again and again. «I must work,» I warned her; «Smith has given me a lot to do.» «Oh, my dear,» she said, her eyes filling with tears,
