women are really lesbians at heart, that they only screw guys because of social pressures. I think she's right. I just don't enjoy fucking boys any more.'
Lilly shook her head, and her face was serous. 'It's your fault, you know. You seduced me when we were just kids. Remember the games we used to play? First date, and first petting, and first eating-out, and all the rest? Pain, it's never been as good for me since. Except when I'm with you. I think I love you. Don't laugh! I mean it!' I wasn't about to laugh. The look on my face was shock. Lilly was getting into this pretty deeply, and it scared me.
And I didn't remember seducing her. Maybe she'd been a proto-dyke at eleven. As I recalled it, she had been the one who took the initiative, persuading me to touch her, to finger her off. Not that I didn't enjoy it. Sex with Lilly was something I looked forward to. It was a change. But she was getting freaky lately, and I almost expected her now to offer me an engagement ring.
'The trouble with you, Lilly,' I said, 'is that you read too much women's lib stuff. You really believe that we don't need men at all. You're cutting off half the people in the world.'
'I don't want half the people in the world, Pamela Crosby. I just want you. All the time.'
'If I could fit you into my schedule…' I still hoped I could bring her down with some wisecracks.
'Your schedule. I love you, but you're so promiscuous! Do you really enjoy balling almost any guy who asks you, just because he's a guy and has a cock? That's what you do, Pam, and you know it as well as I do: I mean, nobody's a virgin any more, but you carry it to extremes. And are you really that turned on by getting fucked, or are you trying to find something that none of those guys know how to give you? Isn't that why you let them all bang your box?'
Promiscuous? I didn't think of myself that way. It was an uncomfortable moment. Lilly had never talked to me this way before, and I knew now that she was a hundred per cent serious. She wanted me to make some kind of lesbian pact with her and renounce men for life.
I tried to think about Eric, about how nice it had been fucking with him this afternoon, how neat it had been to pick him up and seduce him, but I couldn't remember what he looked like. And who was the last guy I'd fucked? It was just last week, Tuesday or Wednesday, but who was it? Bob? No, he was the week before last. Oh, it was Karen Whittaker's cousin from out of town. Wasn't it? I couldn't remember what he looked like either.
But I could remember Lilly, remember each and every time she'd ever touched me.
I turned to Lilly, my hand sliding from side to side on her small boobs. They were very pretty, I reminded myself, even though they'd never grown much. The nipples were still as big, as pink, as sensitive, as they'd been that first time I ever saw or touched them. My fingers moved again, into the puff of hair at her armpit, and she smiled. One of her legs slid across me, and the soft little hairs she refused to shave away were ticklish on my skin.
'I don't know,' I said finally. 'I'll have to think about it. An awful lot. I don't know if I'm ready to do something like that, and I wonder if you are.'
She smiled smugly. Outside, the front door slammed and we heard the patter of little feet. Her kid brothers. 'Better get decent,' Lilly said softly. 'It wouldn't do to have you caught messing around twice the same day.'
She grabbed her towel and rewrapped it on her body while I pulled up my pants and pulled down my shift. Before I left, she handed me a book entitled Sappho Was a Right-On Woman by a pair of lesbian ladies, and insisted that I read it while I was with Aunt Susan. 'And when you come home,' she added, 'I'll be waiting. Right here. With a horn on for you.' We kissed and said good-bye and I had to go. This was some day, all right!
And to make matters worse, that night, when I crawled into bed, I had a visitor. It was Mom, come to have a mother-daughter talk. I recognized it as soon as she started. It was the same one she'd given me when I had my first date, back in seventh grade. All about being very careful, protecting my reputation, not cheapening myself just because some ill-bred boy made demands on me.
I was careful enough. I took my Pill first thing every morning. She didn't know that, and I didn't tell her. But what about the rest? Was I cheapening myself? And what the hell kind of a reputation did I have? Boys were nice enough when they were with me, especially when they knew a little piece was in the offing, but what did they say when I wasn't around?
I'd never given it any thought till that little chat with Lilly, and now, with Mom trying to patch up this afternoon's bad scene, I couldn't think about anything else. Maybe getting caught wasn't so bad after all. Mom had called Aunt Susan and my little vacation was definitely on, so I should be spending the next month in a quiet, sexless environment. I'd have time to think. Maybe I'd cut down on my catting when I got home again. Guys expecting an easy score on me might be in for a big surprise.
And who knew? Maybe I'd read Lilly's book, too. Maybe – just maybe – by the time I got home I, too, would be as confirmed a lesbian as she seemed to be. I thought about that after Mom kissed me good night, and there was a warm moist feeling in the pit of my cunt. Was my body telling me something?
I reached to stroke that moistness, to kindle the sensation creeping upon me, but when I took my fingers away, I just groaned in an undertone. It wasn't lust. The curse had arrived for its monthly visit.
CHAPTER THREE
I was still woozy from the feel of solid ground beneath my feet when I heard someone call my name.
'Pam?!' came the voice again, and when I looked in its direction, Aunt Susan was coming towards me. I hadn't seen her in a year or two; but there was no mistaking her.
They sell her books on almost every newsstand in the country, paperback Gothic and romance novels. She writes under her real name, Susan Williamson, plus two or three pen-names. Mama has a lot of her books, but not nearly all.
She's Mama's baby sister, in her early thirties now, but she has a frowzy, ageless look to her that makes me think of an old-maid schoolteacher on a particularly bad day. Her mousy brown hair was pulled back into a tight, dangling ponytail, her face was nude of makeup, and she was wearing a really ghastly combo – loose, oversized sweatshirt and a pair of baggy jeans that fit her like a big tent. She'd never been fat, and I wondered if she just bought her clothes an guesswork frown bargain bins at Goodwill Stores.
'Hi, Aunt Sue,' I said, lifting my face so she could kiss me hello. Her breath was antiseptic, and there was but the slightest glimmer of life in the near-green eyes behind the big round lenses of her glasses. Those eyes could have been pretty, I thought, if the rest of her wasn't so blah!
'You're growing up so fast,' she told me, but Aunt Susan had a few inches on me in height. 'I was so happy when Barbara called. I'm afraid I'm becoming a hermit. Seems I never see any of you any more. Here, let's get your things into the car. Lee!'
From out of nowhere a guy had appeared on the scene. He was about her age, I guessed, and he was okay. Tall, not too hefty but not skinny either, his hair dark and shaggy, he had a strong, handsome ugly face. Aunt Susan saw me eyeing him and she caught my hand.
'Pam, this is Lee Kinloch. He's an instructor at the university, and a good friend besides. Lee, this is my niece Pamela. Isn't she lovely? Well! We'd better get her things into the car.'
Hmmm, I thought, shaking his hand, where did the old girl find him? And how in the world does she hang onto him?
His car was close by – Aunt Sue's auto was a little two-seater, again quite at odds with her dowdy exterior, too small to hold my baggage – so we loaded up and went motoring away. Aunt Susan lives ten or fifteen miles outside Athens, in the country, and she talked most of the way. Most of her conversation revolved around how nice it was to see me, and how pretty I'd become, and didn't Lee think so, too. He did, and. I was delighted. He had a nice voice and a nice smile and a nice manner, and he didn't treat me like a child, the way so many adults do with girls my age. I could have gone for him, but if he dug on Aunt Sue's type, I didn't stand the chance of a snowball in hell. And besides, if he was her personal stuff, it wouldn't be right to play for him anyway. That's only moral.
Aunt Sue's been in and around Athens for ten or twelve years. She got her B.A. and M.A. at the university, began writing (and selling) as an undergraduate, and she's never left. With the profits from her first ten or twelve books, she bought a farmhouse in the country, fixed it up, and settled down. I suppose she enjoyed being a hermit, but the only thing southeastern Ohio reminds me of is hillbilly heaven. To each her own.
