on each occasion I spent with him, who would throw in the breech. George Maytemper was always willing to go on. Of course, that may have had to do with the fact that, as a sexual partner, he was essentially passive-but, then, I am not completely certain of that. “Aggressive” and “passive” are, really, peculiarly slippery terms, for in a universe where there is, actually, no up or down, where there is never an absence of motion-how can one blithely believe that one individual is at a standstill while another is moving? Seemingly still-that was George Maytemper. Was he? Surely the cauldron of cream that seemed with frequent periodicity to geyser out of his spherical pits- surely they were not immobile… “Victoria,” he said-the first time. “Yes?” “You will have to be patient with me.”
“How so?” I asked. “Isn't it obvious?” “Oh,” I said. “The rolls of suet. Obviously the usual posture is ruled out.” I had supposed, of course, that the strictly conventional might prove difficult but, now that I saw George Maytemper in the pure fat of his naked flesh, it became clear to me that only one method was possible-Maytemper was obliged to lie on his back. “What a pretty picture,” I said, gazing down at him. “What you have there, sprouting from a hollow, so to speak, is quite a lightning rod.” I put a finger to pursed lips. “Do you suppose,” I continued, “that the sensualist Ben Franklin got the idea for his lightning rod from his own genital situation? The female, naturally, being the lightning that strikes from above.” So saying, I straddled my brother's friend.
“Are you about to strike?” he asked. He pouted. I had never seen Maytemper pout before-I supposed that in this sort of situation he pouted aside all inhibitions. “No,” I said. “The lightning is first going to play for a little while about one of your structures.
And it seems a very stout structure indeed, standing as it does without any visible means of support.” I grinned at my wit-I would refine it. “An erection may be defined as any member standing without visible means of support,” I said. Maytemper laughed grudgingly.
“A woman of beauty with humor,” he said. “A most extraordinary combination. Not to mention the saucy manner in which your black hairsprings contribute a small creek to your navel.” “That stirs you, does it?” “Aye, Victoria.” He was being quite candid. A series of throbs, like a powerful pillar being shaken, overtook Maytemper's battering-ram and produced a liquid pearl at the aperture.
“Such effusions can be quite useful,” I said. “How so?”
Maytemper asked as he pawed my swaying breasts, depressing the nipples. This was the first inkling that something had gone wrong-ordinarily, if anyone makes free with my nipples, a dizzying lubrication takes place at my abdomen's black delta and I am straightway an idiot ready to be mauled, pinched, masticated and penetrated by any instrument at hand, be it a male's natural virility or a dildo. On this occasion, however, I felt not in any scintilla erotic, nor did I in any way feel sensations of pain. On the contrary, I felt dry and numb. I frowned. “I can use your perfect pearl,” I said, “to make the tributary to my navel glisten as it never has before.” “Please do,” George Maytemper said. “I am at your service, Victoria.” I did more than make that tributary glisten-I applied May-temper's glutinous substance to my undistended pudenda, another sign that all was not well. My sangfroid was undisturbed.
I took the necessary further steps to prove or disprove the state of my sexual being. But I was in no great haste. George Maytemper was. “Victoria-” “Yes?” “I shall have to urge you to keep pace.” I had been consciously giving the impression to George that I was relishing each individual step. After all, Victoria Collins is, whatever she's not, very much of a human person, and my thespian mentor had been thoroughly persuaded that I was slowly savoring every aspect of our conjunction. Now, of course, I could easily promote the impression that I could ecstatically race down to the finish line. “I will keep pace, George.” “Ah,” said he.
Twice more he said “ah', each time as if he had received a jolt. I wasn't sure. The fabled Shakespeare himself in his plays has used three accented monosyllables in sequence to gain intensely dramatic effects. I myself, in order to convince George, had thrown back my head-I looked all the world like some figure of a female on the prow of a New England clipper ship-and was making some imbecilic sounds in my nose-throat system. Curious, I had never known how imbecilic I must have sounded on prior occasions until this experience with George Maytemper in which I was creating a role of feeling everything while I felt nothing. After his third “ah,” he said, “Victoria-” He sounded as if he were choking, and I did not know what to do about that. I did say, “Yes?” even as I had before, but I did not believe the interchange would be as before. I continued to rise and fall on his elephantine tusk as if I were a special emissary alternating between the down-draughts to Hell and the up-draughts to Heaven, but there was no pounding in my ears. I was as ice.
“Victoria…” He sounded now as if he were gargling.
“What is it, George?” “What is it?” he echoed laboriously, his lips writhing. For the purposes of verisimilitude I thought I had better anticipate him. “Are you there?” I asked.
“Quite,” he said in something of a strangled fashion. “Like Mt.
Vesuvius or some fireplug sprinkler.” “Vesuvius, for God's sake-Victoria-Victoria-Victoria-” His mouth was open and his eyes were shut. He was as if in a convulsion. And, at the proper moment, when I felt his tidal wave break over my apparatus, I screamed.
George Maytemper smiled… I smiled back. I even lingered over his lingam. I made sure-to be vulgar but precise over the matter-that he was cleaned out. He quivered, not once-but many times, then and later. I gave him the extremely clear impression that I coincided with him all the way and that we stopped only when dawn broke not because his testicular production had gone bankrupt but because I was all fucked out-I thought I should have the grace to tell George that, and I did. He beamed-higher praise he had never received.
The strange thing was that I had authentically striven to gain the same pleasure that he was experiencing- and that I had signally failed. That night I was not fucked out. I was never fucked in. As the night had worn on, my numbness had persisted in the face of George Maytemper's shish-kebab, a near-Eastern dish of considerable pungency whose shape and form, en brochette, most nearly approximated his cock. It mattered not in the least how often I skewered myself with Maytemper's brochette-I was as if frozen. And the more I worried over this sexual state of nonbeing, the colder my responses became-if that were possible. It took no profound glimpse into my psyche for me to understand that I must be punishing myself by feeling guilty for having caused my only love's death-Hugh Kinsteare's. Although I had quite sensibly realized that I was not to be held culpable, there was something within me that singled me out for blame- almost as if I had to suffer for having dared fall in love.
What was really transpiring within my depths was quite simple-I was being frigid because I was in mourning and, when my grief would cease, then and only then would my sexual excitement revive. But I understood that only years later. Who could have foretold that a great Dane would end my grief? In the meantime I was frightened by my lack of sexual response and I took every opportunity to attempt to dissipate it. I not only went periodically to bed with the producer of Maytemper's Mummers-George Maytemper himself-but also with the leading man, Henry Quibbling, and the leading lady, Sylvia Knox-Drendendorff.
As a matter of fact, while we were touring Sussex-and I was acquitting myself admirably on the boards, receiving excellent notices in the local sheets-the juvenile lead, Stanley Widdemer, fell head-over-cock in love with me. It was in Brighton-I shall never forget, for reasons which shall shortly become clear-where Stanley, taking advantage of our surprisingly long run there, declared his undying passion for me.
We were both in our bathing clothes and strolling hand-in-hand along the shallows late that hot July morning, desultorily collecting seashells and within moments contemptuously tossing them back to whatever denizens of the deeps were there to catch them. I managed to blush prettily at Stanley's declaration and, observing the massive crowding in the crotch of his bathing clothes, I bethought myself that perhaps Stanley Widdemer might be in possession of the magic wand or, better, that Excalibur which, plunged into the core of my femaleness, might unseat the icy demon there. Accordingly I made the appropriately senseless sounds and led Stanley to an equally appropriate locus in the hollow of a dune, out of sight of the sea and of the stately, white- faced Georgian residences looking out upon the eternal waters, their windows winking in the midday sun. Stanley Widdemer was a tall lad, thin to the point of emaciation, who had that kind of open-faced, naive countenance that the many middle-aged ladies in our Maytemper's Mummers afternoon audience fell cooingly in love with. I rather felt, myself, that I was about to corrupt a minor, even though the lad was some half-dozen years older than I. Corrupt if you can, I told myself-this may be the key, literally, to unlock Victoria Collins's box. The hell with Pandora's. My own was much more apropos-where one might encounter the shrunken heads of phalli suitably mounted, a much more fascinating exhibit than any big-game hunter's trophy room, on the backgrounds of the natives' brush. Let us hope, thought I, that Stanley Widdemer's phallus will be worth the capture. As the saying goes, I minced no actions. As soon as we had embraced and kissed, Stanley having no trouble in persuading me to endure the sand, I felt for what might be called-if mild exaggeration may be permitted-the cloverleaf creature of
