careful who you talk to on buses and trams. Then he walked away, and we went home to Grandma's house. My brand-new piggybank was waiting for me on top of the dresser that had been my mother's when she was a little girl. Piggy's first dinner from me was the ten-dollar bill that had been slipped into my hand by the man who'd taught my body how to make love, how to waken from girlhood, how to climax.
'In the years that followed, as I set one foot ahead of the other on my climb to wealth and security, I all but forgot the man on the cross-country bus. I was so busy learning-learning acting technique, stage movement, all the things I'd need to be the successful star my grandmother had always wanted to be.
'It had been her constant pushing to get my mother into acting lessons, casting offices and bit parts in motion pictures, that the girl who was to become that broken woman back East ran away and married the first man who told her he loved her-my father. The disappointment of my mother's desert in of what she believed to be a promising career as an actress never left my grandmother's mind, and so when I wrote to her, begging to live with her instead of in the teeming slum that was the only place my father could keep us, she accepted me as another daughter, another chance to vicariously live the fame she'd never known.
'Years went by-busy years, happy years, years when I slowly perfected the technique of offering my body, or some part of it, as an exchange for whatever I most needed at the moment. My body brought me food, since the money that kept Grandma and me wasn't enough for even a sack lunch after we paid for the expensive lessons Grandma insisted I needed to become a star. There was always dinner at home, but if I wanted lunch, I knew I'd better find a likely male who had the price of it in his pockets, then butter him up without ever quite lying down with him.
By and by, as I became known in the different studios where I answered casting calls for extras, I found out who was-and wasn't-interested in semi-supporting a beautiful young woman who'd look very good on his arm at parties, premiers, and in the news shots and publicity photos that the studios are always sending out'
'One day! was walking through the old Metro lot, in costume as an Egyptian slave girl, when I felt a firm hand under my elbow, and a deep voice said, 'Don't panic-old Pharaoh's not gonna eat you up. He just wants to see that you get a nice lunch.' I looked up, and the star of the film we were making was actually holding my arm, steering me toward the commissary, taking an interest in me, an unknown extra! Wow! I thought, I do believe this is it! We had lunch, and I skillfully drew the
conversation around to his problem, his life, his looks-for anyone who's ever known an actor will ten you how easy it is to get them to talk about themselves!
'By the time he'd told me about himself for an hour, he was convinced I was the most interesting girl on the lot, maybe even in Hollywood. He was going through a divorce at the time-his second-and he wanted company, a shoulder to cry on. I readily supplied him with both. We were soon what the gossip columnists call an 'item' and in a matter of two months, I was living with him in his Bel Air mansion. My acting lessons continued, however, and I had Grandma as an almost live-in guest.
Things were really looking up-for him, too. Somehow, getting rid of his wife had freed him of the tension that kept him from being the fine actor he was now becoming, and more and better parts started coming his way.
'Our sex life was wonder, Cabot, was the perfect lover-passionate, considerate, affectionate. After six months of an exciting, glamorous affair, we were married in a little chapel in Acapulco, and I knew then that all the working and saving and conniving had been worthwhile-I was the wife of a dear, good man who just happened to be one of the world's up-and-coming motion picture stars, and was also quite comfortably wealthy as a result of having invested his earnings in California real estate. No more slums for this lady, ever. No more fighting the rats to get to the garbage can, no more hiding my piggybank from my drunken father, no more hearing my mother call the police when she thought we couldn't hear her and ask if there was any news of my daddy's whereabouts, or if he was safely in jail again.
'Grandma was overjoyed, but she insisted on my continuing with the lessons for which we'd done without. 'You never know, Renee-a woman should always have a trade in case she needs to earn her own way someday. Keep on learning and you'll never starve, with or without a husband.' I took her advice and enrolled in the finest drama academy on the West coast. Along with all the other things that Cabot's money could buy, it brought my mother-my father had died three years ago as the result of a fall while he was on one of his drunken toots, and the two kids that were still at home to the West coast, and we installed them As proud home owners in a comfortable house not far from where we lived. I thought I had everything.
'Then one day I called the phone number of a masseuse who had been recommended by a friend of mine. All the rich food I'd been gobbling since coming to live with. Cabot had begun to show in a very unattractive layer of fat, and I knew if I wanted to get even a second lead that I'd better stay slim. So I called Laureen, and when she started robbing my body, something about her strong, capable hands seemed so familiar that my heart quite literally turned over. I couldn't remember for the life of me who'd touched me that way, who'd stroked me into an awareness of my own body that I'd never known before. Even though Cabot and I had a good sexual relationship, and even though I enjoyed myself tremendously in his arms, there had always been something missing-something I could never put my finger on, but that I wanted so much that I pushed it out of my mind because I thought I'd never have it.
'Now, the professional hands of a masseuse, a woman I'd only known for a half-hour, were reawakening memories.that I'd buried under a landslide of need, an avalanche of ambition. Where did I know that touch? Who had stroked my body in just that way-firmly but lightly, rhythmically but capably? After a few minutes of puzzling over this half-forgotten sensation, I let my mind and body be lulled by Laureen's expert touch and drifted into a hazy, half-waking state where impressions went slipping by like clouds across a summer sky. Suddenly I sat up on the massage table, my towel falling away, and I nearly shouted aloud, 'That's it! the man on the cross-country bus!'
'Good sense kept my mouth shut and I explained my sudden movement to Laureen as the result of a muscle twinge. We went on with the massage, but now I was tingling all over as my body remembered my first sexual experience, when the hands of a man in a dark bus taught me to climax. I knew that the worst thing I could do was tell Laureen about this-and certainly, never ever could I talk about it to Cabot. His frail actor's ego would never survive the blow that I would give it by telling him that I was more turned on by the hands of a masseuse than I was by the whole body of a gorgeous film star-who just happened to be my husband.
'So the days went by, with me tingling to touch of my masseuse while still madly in love with my husband. It was a good thing that I'd become such a fine little actress-my training in. that area was all that kept me from giving away the whole thing to both husband and masseuse. I hadn't been able to climax to Laureen's touch as yet, because naturally, she was only massaging the areas of my body that needed it, in her opinion. Unfortunately, the part of me that needed her massage more than anywhere else was my hungry pussy, with my breasts running a dose second. But how to get her to do it without having her think I was a roaring lesbian? I wasn't, at least not at that time. I just wanted Laureen to rob my pussy, massage my clitoris, stroke my breasts the way the man in the bus had done, I wanted it so much that as weeks went by, I could think of nothing else.
'Everything went by the board, because I just couldn't stop myself from thinking about the man on the bus, about his hands, his touch, and how much better it had been then the loving my husband gave me, how much more exciting it had been than the different affairs I'd had before I was married. Even though I'd never had a lesbian experience, or even known a lesbian girl, K started fantasizing about Laureen, about how K could get her to rub my pussy, maybe squeeze my breasts or even kiss my lips lightly, as the man on the bus had done so long ago.
'Unbelievable? Yes, it was unbelievable that a woman who had so much in material wealth, so much in married affection, so much in the way of a beginning career in films, should risk losing everything for the sake of reliving her first sex experience. But it had become an obsession-I had to experience once more the feelings that I'd first known in that cramped bus seat with the gentle lecher who had become in my memory, the man-on-the- bus.
'I began masturbating for the first time in my life, because I was so frustrated and confused. Cabot made love to me three or four nights a week, and sometimes oftener. I was losing interest in our lovemaking because I wanted something different-I wanted those soft, gentle hands on my body-I wanted the forbidden-fruit situation of a little girl and an older man touching each other in the middle of a group of people who didn't know what they were doing. I wanted to feel naughty, to go back and do it all over again-but I couldn't and knowing I couldn't was turning me into a mooning neurotic.
'The days when Laureen came to the house to give me a massage were red-letter days for me-I bathed, shaved my legs, douched, perfumed my skin, made up my face and did my hair as carefully as I once did for a lover.
