beds, so that each bedroom could accommodate two couples when a serious party was in progress, like today. Propriety demanded neither couple should look at the other while arriving or departing or while at play themselves. Strange, when he entered a bedroom the first time, found it impossible not to stop and stare. “Hey. You’re not supposed to look,” the girl welder who was with him cried cheerily. “No. You’re not,” a muffled voice said from the cot. The girl welder added, “You’re supposed to look only at me.”
The third of the four women he took to bed during the afternoon and the evening wanted him to go down on her, make her come by licking her pussy. She was willing, more than willing, to go down on him, too. Her name was Frances Highsmith. She was a metal lathe operator, had dropped out of Washington University in St. Louis to do war work after her brother was lulled in the Air Force over England, and made Strange think a little bit of Carol Firebaugh. Which was why he had singled her out. Years before Strange might have slapped her in the jaw and thrown her out of there. Instead now he only smiled and refused. Politely.
“What’s the matter?” Frances said. “Haven’t you ever eaten cunt before?”
“No,” Strange said. “No, I haven’t.”
“You mean you think it’s dirty? Filthy? Perverted? Something like that?” Frances demanded. “A perversion?”
They were on the narrow cot bed this time, lying side by side, and Strange could feel his heated erection beating with his heartbeat against her slim belly.
“I guess so,” he said. “Something like that.”
“Boy, have you got a lot to learn,” Frances Highsmith said. “I’ve heard about fellows like you. But I didn’t think I’d meet one up here.”
Strange felt irritated. “Well. It’s the same thing as being queer. Isn’t it.”
“Queer?” Frances Highsmith said. “Queer?” She peered at him. “You must be a real country boy. Didn’t you ever watch dogs? It would be queer if I went down on a girl. Or if you went down on a boy. But it’s not queer for boys and girls together.
“Well, haven’t you ever even thought about it? In a fantasy?”
“No, I never have.”
“Hey, listen. Are you married?”
“Yes,” Strange said stiffly.
“Boy, am I sorry for your wife. How do you think women come?”
“I’ve never thought about it.”
“Wow. You never even thought about it?” Frances said. “Well, maybe I better explain it to you. You know what a clitoris is?”
“Sure.”
“Are you sure? It’s a woman’s penis. Women come from stimulating that. They don’t come from having cocks shoved into them.” She stopped. “Well, maybe a few do. But it’s very rare. Physically, it’s next to impossible. —You sure you don’t want to try it?”
“No. No doubt in my mind,” Strange said.
“Well, I think there’s something seriously wrong with you.”
“Listen,” a muffled male voice said from the other bed. “If you two want to argue philosophy, will you kindly do it outside?”
“You shut up,” Frances said.
“But don’t let that stop you,” Strange said.
“No,” Frances said. “Oh, no. No, sir. Let’s just fuck. I’ll find somebody else to come with later. I’m not going to blow some fellow that won’t blow me.”
“Well, fuck him then, honey, and shut up,” a muffled female voice said from the big bed.
“I guess she’s right,” Frances said. “If we’re going to do anything at all, we better get on with it.”
“I’m ready,” Strange said. “For everything but licking you.”
She had already turned flat on her back, and now she made a practiced little sideways motion that seemed to slide her right under him, legs apart, like a card in a deck. Like the burn card going onto the bottom of a poker deck.
Later on, later in the evening, he saw her going off with Landers. He wondered if Landers would make her come by licking her pussy for her. Maybe Landers might, he was an educated college boy. Well, every man to his own taste.
Like many another boy, Strange had stared heatedly and hungrily at all the photographs and drawings of wide-open vaginas that were available just about everywhere across America in his youth. He had sat and watched the stag films that always, somehow or other, found their way to all the NCO clubs across the country. But all the photos of wide-open pussies had never destroyed the ultimate mystery of woman for him. Nothing had ever destroyed the mystery of women for him. Not even marriage had. Maybe that was the