looked with interest at his penis—aside from Todd's, she'd seen them only in pictures. Joel's was larger than Todd's, the head blunter and redder, and she knew size was supposed to be a virtue but it didn't strike her that way at all. She loved Todd's penis, its brown-pink shaft and delicate lavender tip. Joel's was raw, thickly veined, and at the sight of it she passed through her single moment of doubt. It struck her that his penis might be an aberration, something freakish and unwholesome. Maybe she should change her mind, send him away. She almost spoke but he took her in his arms again, peppered her hair and neck with kisses, and she decided to let it happen. She would remember, afterward, that there had been a decision.
He took her to the bed, an old double that had belonged to her parents, and drew back the covers. She was touched by his domesticity, his gentleness. She slid under the blankets and felt like a girl in a fairy tale, captured by a beast with immense paws and powerful haunches, a beast that devoured others but adored her. When she'd thought of something like this she'd thought of danger, hard predatory breaths and the tearing of fabric. She'd never imagined it kind or courtly.
Joel lay beside her, and she put her hand on his shoulder. He smiled, shyly. His face was neither ugly nor handsome. It was simply a face, with a round nose and ordinary eyes and shaggy black brows. He ran his fingers along her arm, touched her elbow consolingly, as a friend would. This is happening, she thought. This is what it's like. He brought his hand up to her breast and, as he grazed the nipple with his fingertips, his mouth formed an 0, as if he, too, had felt the touch, found it surprising and pleasant.
He circled her nipple with the tip of his index finger, then ran the finger under her breast and weighed it, gently, in his palm. “Mm,” he whispered. She was moved but not excited and she began to think that it would all be tender, remote, and small. It would happen outside her; she could see herself making the bed again after he'd gone. Her theory had probably been right: sex at best was a pleasant and minor experience, widely overpraised. Because it didn't matter, because this would end soon and nothing would change, she let her hand fall to his chest. She'd explore him like a nurse and then she'd know something other women knew, the heft and grain of men's bodies. It was a casual curiosity, it didn't smolder. She was satisfied with Todd. But sometimes she'd wondered how he conformed and how he differed. She'd wondered what, exactly, other women meant when they talked about their men in bed. Joel's chest was solid under a layer of fat, like Susan's own thighs. A fountain of curly dark hair sprouted in the middle, circled his nipples (longer than Todd's, more pointed and womanly) and straggled down along the curve of his belly. He must have been a dream at twenty, and as she thought of that she pictured him as a schoolboy. Quiet, she thought. Athletic but not heroic, neither celebrated nor shunned, one of the steady boys who faithfully dated the same girl (a decent girl, semi-pretty, who sang in the school choir), and married her soon after. By now he might have been married twenty years or more, and his habits of fidelity had finally worn thin. He bent toward her, smiling, and put his mouth on her nipple, which faintly resembled his own. She felt queasy and she almost pushed his face away, but his lips were velvety and he kissed her nipple without a hint of tooth. Then he touched it with his tongue and the first true sensation ran through her, a high ticklish feeling that made her draw her breath sharply in. She hadn't expected that. He tongued her nipple and then he tongued the other, and she caromed between pleasure and squeamishness, as she had when she was a little girl and her father had held her down and tickled her. She couldn't say whether she liked this or not. The squeamish sensation rose from her belly to her throat, and without removing his lips Joel let his fingers wander down her belly to her crotch. “Oh,” she said, loudly enough to surprise herself. Joel's fingers teased her pubic