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Gloria walked the plank and dropped onto the deck of the boat. She had a small weekend case in her hand that held pajamas, shorts, matador pants, two shirts, a bra, panties, and a bathing suit. That was enough for a week.

  She felt the boat rocking under her feet – an exhilarating sensation. The New York pavement shook every nerve in your body, and the gentle sea reminded her that there were some experiences that Man had not created, could not tamper with. Just an old nature girl at heart, she scoffed, knowing that within a week she would be hungry for a badly-lit bar or even a bus ride. I wonder, she thought, if the rapist likes the water. Was he always there in her head, sharing and damaging every moment?

  She walked to the top deck of the boat and sat on the bench that circled the railing. She turned backwards on the bench and stuck her feet through the bottom railing. She leaned her arms on the top bar and watched the silver-specked chopping of the bay. She flicked her cigarette overboard and could see it, a pale ghost sinking through the water. Laura sat down next to her and seemed to loose her tension as she breathed deeply. Maybe I could tell her now. Maybe she'd accept that I never tasted her precious husband's prick.

  Laura twisted in her seat and faced the water with Gloria.

  "It is wonderful. It's embarrassing to say it every week, but it is wonderful, isn't it?"

  "It makes you realize," Gloria helped, "that we live in an awfully small world, knocking our heads against television antennas over one paltry little man."

  Laura laughed. "Paltry is hardly the word. But maybe we have paltry heads. Maybe that's why they knock so easily."

  "I never thought of that," Gloria reflected. "I'm glad I never thought of that. It's rather depressing."

  "I'm stupid to say this," Laura relinquished her firm self-control, "but often, when I come someplace very lovely, and enjoy it, like here and now, I hate Christopher's not being with me. It's as though I'm enjoying it half as much as I could. And knowing about the other half really makes it worse than nothing. I'm sorry to say this," she quickly added. "I don't mean to punish you with my marital problems," and her voice was sarcastic, "all week."

  Don't try so hard

  , Gloria wanted to say. Don't think for a minute that just because you're not screaming like a madwoman you don't know you're suffering. Instead she said, "Laura, please don't be too brave with me. That's the only thing that really horrifies me – your bravery." "But you never tell me what you're thinking or going through," Laura admonished. "I know something's terribly wrong with you now, but you never say a word about it."

  "Believe me," Gloria hastily interposed, "there's nothing I could say. I'm going through something, but I'll never be able to discuss it. No one – and here I go being original – would understand."

  Laura sat looking at her until a fortunate interruption rescued the moment. A very energetic man sat down next to them. He was one of the island "regulars." Both women knew him from last year, and the year before, and the year before that.

  "Hey, girls," he greeted them, and wasting no time, "are you going to Leon's party?"

  He wrote the gags for a leading TV comedian, but he was disastrously unfunny in his life. Probably the comedian was unfunny as well, but nobody ever listened to him once he was off the set.

  "Yes, Gregory," Laura answered. "We'll be at Leon's."

  He was a bit disappointed. He would have liked, for once, to be invited to a party that didn't include everyone he knew. He would have liked to feign naive dismay if Laura had said, "What party?" But he reconciled to their being invited and decided to treat them as one of the accepted. "He's going to have a terrific band there."

  Laura continued the conversation, but Gloria stared at the water as the boat started to move, arching into the bay.

  There was still an hour of sun when they pulled to shore. Along the small wooden docks, a handful of women who spent their week on the island were waving to the boat and calling out names. A redhead named Peggy had a lei around her neck, and she was swaying to unheard Hawaiian chants. She had a few empty glasses and a pitcher of martinis in her hands, ready to serve the weary travelers.

  Laura and Gloria walked the wooden boards to Laura's small cottage. It was a pleasant, simple structure. They quickly stripped off their shoes and stockings, skirts and shirts, and stepped into brief, winter-packed bathing suits. They threw thin cotton jackets over their shoulders and rushed to the sea.

  Gloria almost wanted to cry when she saw the vital waves breaking on the shore. She wanted to weep at the beauty she could not live with; or swim far out beyond the waves and stay there until she knew she would live without ever forgetting them.

  The water was chilling to her naked back and stomach. She swam hard, but the waves knocked her back to the shore. Her mind emptied for the activity of her limbs as she forced her body against a too-strong mother. No, the sea would nurse no one. The two women left the water together and stretched out on the sand. Gloria's fingers wet the cigarette that she freed from the pack, but the match ignited the tobacco. The salt water dripped from her hair across her face and down into the channel between her breasts. The cold, bracing water had made her nipples hard and round under her suit, and she could feel them abrasive against the cloth.

  "Come on," Laura urged. "We'll be late for the party."

  "Oh boy," Gloria mocked. "Imagine being late for one of Leon's parties. I don't think I could live through it."

  "I just want to have a few drinks and be in a room with lots of people," Laura explained.

  "Of course," Gloria agreed. "Of course. Let's go."

  They had a few bottles of cold beer and changed into long, tight, dark pants and sleeveless sweaters. Their faces already sparkled with artificial health. The sky was darkening when they reached the door of Leon's cottage.

  The room was filled with casually dressed drinkers. This was a very casual island, Gloria remembered with contempt. A boy in a corner of the room was playing an uneven beat on a set of drums. His shirtsleeves were rolled above thick muscular arms, and his face had a passive Mexican sensuality. He had a thick Zapata mustache and looked like an untouched peon, not a commercial artist, which of course, he was. In another corner of the room, a chorus of girls was singing a nameless rock song, and one of the girls was trying to work up a tear, or at least a crack in her voice. An accompanying musician was running his hand up and down her ass.

  Gloria accepted a drink and sat down to talk with some of last year's friends. A few of them had been divorced, and a few had been married. Next year, roles would be reversed. Nothing had really happened, but they were all filled with the false importance of the winter's events. She took another drink.

  The evening went on, and Gloria got drunker and drunker until she thought it might be a good idea to pick up a big fat book and break all the glasses in all the hands in the room. She was searching for the right book when a young man walked over to her and said, "I think your glass is empty."

  "Isn't that a tragedy."

  "Would you like another drink?" he asked.

  "No," she said. "As a matter of fact, I'd like something to eat. I haven't had anything all day."

  "Wait here a minute," he told her.

  She forgot him until he reappeared and took her by the elbow.

  "I've got a few ham sandwiches in my pockets," he whispered. "But let's get out of here and eat them on the beach."

  The smoke in the room was getting thick as rubber and she was happy to leave. They walked quietly to the water, the modest sand dunes rising in front of them.

  "Love among the dunes," she sang.

  He said, "What?"

  "Could I have the sandwich now?" she said. "I'm very hungry."

  "Oh sure," he agreed, fumbling with the food in his pockets. "I'm sorry."

  Gloria bit voraciously into the bread, but as soon as she started to chew, she discovered the dryness of her throat. She tried to swallow and almost choked.

  "What's the matter?" her companion asked.

  She spat the br
ead out. "Sorry, my throat is like parchment."

  "Wait here," he said again, and disappeared into a nearby house.

  She sat on the sand, listening to the waves dashing on the other side of the dunes. He was back in an instant with two bottles of beer and his raincoat.

  "Better to sit on," he explained, pointing to the coat.

  "You think of everything."

  He stopped and looked at her for a while with his sympathetic and knowing eyes. Then he said, "Take it easy."

  "What do you mean?" Gloria countered.

  "You know, I'm not going to rape you."

  "That's my problem," she told him.

  He was quite wise. "A lot of people have that problem. But I don't rape women. I make them share the responsibility."

  "You have a point," she nodded to him.

  He spread his coat and they sat down, protected by a softly sloping sand dune. She bit the sandwich hungrily and took great gulps of the bottled beer.

  "You forget to eat in the big city, don't you?" he asked.

  "You forget to live," she laughed.

  "Where are you from?"

  Here we go 'round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush.

  "Kansas City."

  He studied her. "You like New York?"

  "New York is New York," she explained. "You make your own New York."

  "You shouldn't stay here," he said.

  "That's what they told me in Kansas City."

  "They were wrong." He was very sure of himself. "New York is a tough city."

  "Everywhere is tough. First of all, we live in our own bodies with our own twisted heads. The same things would happen to me anywhere I lived."

  "There are more rules in Kansas City," he explained. "Sometimes it's convenient to have a lot of rules."

  She put her head in her hands. God, was he going to depress her? Was he going to tell her to take care of herself and then tell her what was best for her, and then fuck her?

  "Do I remind you of your sister, or mother?" she said acidly.

  "No," he told her. "Not at all."

  "Would you like to fuck me?"

  He paused. "No. Not particularly."

  "What are you, gay or something?"

  "Why do you fight so hard?" he asked.

  "I'd just rather fuck than be analyzed," she explained.

  "Does every word two people exchange have to be analysis?"

  She pressed her body into the sand. Her invitation and his quiet refusal mortified her, and she felt foolish tears coming into her eyes.

  "Don't feel so bad," he advised. "I don't feel like I've won the first round."

  "You should have just fucked me," she cried.

  "Would you have felt better?"

  "Much," she answered. "Much, much better," and this time she was sobbing.

  Then he leaned over and curiously, gently, inexplicably, kissed her. It felt like her first kiss. His mouth cushioned hers with gentle sensitivity. She gasped with a mixture of pleasure and surprise. He did not speak another word to her. His mouth traveled down to her neck, and found the shaded hollow of her delicate bones. He pressed against her throat as though he would transfuse his blood and life into her. Then he returned to her mouth and lingered there, moving his tongue exploringly against the soft inner flesh of her cheeks.

  His mouth played long and soft on hers until she felt she was moving her head in slow rapturous movements against the sun, an infinitely warm and patient nourishment. His mouth sapped her strength and he moved noiselessly to remove her sweater and matador pants and thin nylon underclothes. She lay nude, stretched out and sacrificed in the sand. She rolled off his coat, and the sand was damp and cool and granular against her buttocks. Over his shoulders, she could see the stars, spaced and cold. The moon was starkly white, like a winter moon, and imperfectly round.

  The black sky filtered into her soul. But miraculously, it reassured her that time was hers. She could stretch time beyond the bounds of eternity. The sea, smacking the shore, understood her restless struggle.

  The boy's head was magnificent, silhouetted by the moon. He looked with adoration at her breasts, light and sharp in the night air. He circled her nipples with his lips. He sucked ravenously at the firm tits, sending shivers of terror and glory along her spine. His hand reached for her godhead, and his mouth and fingers kept the same magical rhythm. Then he moved his head to her thighs and pressed his tongue into her flowing cunt. She did not touch him, but ground herself into the sand, enslaved by his controlled caresses. He caught her taut clitoris and ran his teeth over the throbbing pit. She cried for mercy and for more ... but he did not hear her, intent on his sensuous worship. Her body shivered with the swiftly moving sensations, melting with heat, then rigid with cold. She wanted to, but could not touch him. Her skin felt a prickly bloodless chill. His tongue was searching deep within her womb, proving that her body's privacy was a chimera, that she belonged to man. She reveled in the humiliation, waiting only to be taken.

  "Drain me," she cried. "Let it all out of me. Drain me."

  His palms cupped her buttocks and pulled her against him. She was wet and exposed, muscleless and boneless. She sank into him, rotating her hips in sensuous accord. Then his body was full on hers and he released his thick, virile erection. The swollen head was a burning coal in the cool darkness. She wanted to take his rock-hard cock into her hands, but she hadn't the strength or courage to initiate a gesture.

  Without preamble, he thrust his prick into the center of her heat and energy. It pushed massive and tight in her black eternal secret. Feeling it safe and belonging in her grasping core, she reached her arms around him, timid in her tenderness, and pinned him close, pressing him to her chest. It was the first time that she had clung lovingly to a man. He enabled her at last to be the initiated virgin. Her thighs were spread wide on the sand to make his entry effortless. Be at rest in me, she whispered in her mind ... be at rest in me.

  He lifted his torso to the full length of his potent prick and sank back into her. With his first full thrust, she throbbed the tremendous urge that became an orgasm. He did not move then, but let her release her convulsive triumph against his maleness. Then she felt free and light under him. Free to love with abandon the remainder of the sea-spray-and-sperm-drenched night.

  His strong body pulled her hips against his and he slapped their bellies together, moving primordially, letting her have it all and give it all. His prick was swollen with love within her, and he ponderously, insanely vibrated it in her flowing cunt. She bent her knees and grasped his middle body with her legs, locking her ankles together and firmly attaching him to her. Their bodies rocked in the curve of a demented human cradle. His vital flesh was rubbing ponderously against the small stiff source of her sensation. With each long contact, a turmoil of ecstasy sped through her body. Then he quickened his motion until the two of them palpitated, bodies sucking in and out, and came.

  He fell emptied at her side as she lay breathing deeply and staring at the sky. The tears had again gathered and they were pocketed in the corners of her eyes. He lit two cigarettes and handed one to her. They still did not speak, but inhaled the cigarettes deeply, remembering the life apart from their bodies. She turned on her side to him and kissed his hair and mouth and neck and throbbing heart. She could only thank him without words.

  Staring down at his motionless body, she felt the passion rise within her once again. But this time, he offered his inert form to her.

  She unbuttoned his light summer shirt and lifted it from his heavy arms. He was naked under the shirt, and his chest skin was soft and tight against his ribs. She quickly pulled his trousers till they were slipped in one movement off his body. He lay naked, white as a pumice stone in the night's sun. She sat cross-legged beside him and bent her head as if in prayer. She caught his stiff young rod in her mouth and bowed her head to it until her forehead brushed his pubic hairs. She gluttonously sucked him, reveling in her possession. He shuddered his excitement, and, beneath her h
ead, his hips jumped. Her mouth was as ruthless as his had been. She tongued the smooth, tight-skinned shaft and fingered the heavy potent sacs beneath. He crushed her head against his middle and twisted with a fury that begged for more. The cock pressed the back of her palate and she released her hands to let them wander over his flatly muscled chest. Her hair spread and blanketed his loins and finally her mouth wandered, tasting his thighs and stomach and the delicate stretch of flesh that bridged his virility to his midriff.

  His rod pointed to the moon and now he did not touch her, as she had not touched him before. He moved to turn her onto her back, but she motioned "No" to him. Wordlessly, she lifted her hips and lowered herself squarely onto his upraised prick. He impaled her with a wet sucking sound. She sat high on him and pressed violently, rooted to him and the earth beneath them.

  In her excitement, she could not rotate with the smooth flawless thrusts he had inflicted upon her. Her movements were erratic, like a maddened woman grasped with frenzied religion. She pumped clumsily and rode his prick till the waves of heat in her groin made her unconscious of her motion. She felt herself reaching her climax too soon. It was always too soon, but now she wanted to delay it for eternity. She sat back on him, but the involuntary spasms had begun and they traveled to her clitoris and exhausted themselves there. Her hidden insides drummed and palpitated on his indestructible erection. She gasped with delirium and suddenly felt remote and separate, sitting distant and untouched on his hips.

  With the unerring communication of love, he lowered her torso to his chest, and she rested against his cool skin. He turned her skillfully onto her back and was on her with his unspent vigor. First he moved in slow, long thrusts; then they both surrendered to a primitive unlearned tempo and pounded mercilessly against each other. Her body succumbed to the shock of completion and she knew that she was screaming into the silent night. They were still then, pulsating their fluids into each other's interlocked body.

  It was much later when Gloria heard him stirring and opened her eyes to the reddening dawn. The water was deep green and the sands a quiet gray. The sky streaked over with purple and yellow and pink lights. He looked at his watch and spoke for the first time since she had asked him to fuck her.