One afternoon I returned early from school, long before Mora would be home, and carefully examined the contents of the box on the floor of her closet. It was like a scrapbook that had never been put together. There were pictures of her with an older man and a woman, undoubtedly her parents, standing in front of a large, brick house. Other pictures showed her seated in a spacious, antique-filled living room. There was a photo of her at a birthday party when she was about my age, and three or four photos of girls who had been her modeling-school friends. One was inscribed across the face, "To my darling Mora, to whom I pledge my undying love, Dorothy," and another written on the back, "To Skinny. I will always love you and remember our period of great love."
Her high-school yearbook had a class picture. Mora looked even thinner than she now was. The faces of thirty-one boys had been circled, with no mention or explanation of them.
There were two very hot love letters from Dorothy, the girl who evidently had been her roommate, saying how she missed "… those delicate pink petals and soft breasts that I did so love to love," and pledging to love Mora forever. There was a bill from a hospital in Tucson, addressed to her father, and asking eight-hundred dollars for an emergency dilatation and curettage, along with a copy of a letter explaining that, due to "unfortunate circumstances," extensive damage had been done to the endometrial lining of the uterus, and it was doubtful that his daughter would ever again be able to conceive.
There were canceled checks dating back for a year, made out monthly from her father to Mora, in the amount of one thousand dollars each.
There were four photographs of Mora. In one photo she was sucking the cock of a guy whose face wasn't on camera; in another she was getting it doggie-style from a big, fat guy who had his head turned the wrong way; in the third, she had the same fat guy on top of her and had her head turned to the side, where a young, blond boy had his very juvenile-looking prick in her mouth; in the fourth she was lying with her legs spread toward the camera, shoving a small Coke bottle up her cunt. Under the photos were the negatives, and under those a canceled check made out by her to "cash" for five hundred dollars.
There were also a bunch of matchbooks, napkins, and stirring rods from the various places she had been.
At least I had found a few of the ghosts. How many more ghosts were there? I wondered. I replaced the box exactly as I had found it, and never touched it again.
Her drinking continued. It seemed that my screwing her was the only thing that would keep her away from the gin bottle long enough to be compatible. Unfortunately, because she often came home tired and not feeling like sex, I took a good deal of abuse. She accused me of screwing some of the girls from school, even though she knew that I regarded them as children. She began to demand that I come home immediately after school, and she would phone me from wherever she worked to be sure that I was there. If I went to judo, she would phone me at the dojo. If I had a job to play in the evening she would either go with me or make sure that I was home directly afterward; I dared not even go for a beer with the guys. It sure didn't sound like the mutual-trust routine she had given me in the beginning. Then, when we went to bed, she would get very apologetic, saying that she didn't know why she was like that and begging me to forgive her. And even if she was tired and didn't feel like fucking, she would suck me off just to show that she cared even when I told her that she didn't have to.
On Sundays she would begin to drink with the morning paper, and I started leaving earlier each week to spend the day with my parents.
It suddenly came to me that I was living the life of a prisoner and that, in spite of all the sex I was getting, I wasn't at all happy. It was too great a price to pay, but at the tune I lacked the maturity to leave her. I refused to go crawling back to my parents, and I was still afraid of being by myself in the great big world, afraid of living alone in an empty apartment.
I knew our relationship was deteriorating, and didn't know how to save it, didn't know if I even wanted to save it. But I didn't know what else to do, either, so I played Mora's rules until I got to the point where I wanted to kill her when she yelled at me.
One Sunday evening when I got back from my parents' house, the worm finally turned. Mora had been drinking and painting, meaningless, violent dabs of fuchsia to match her temper. It was eight o'clock, and I was usually back no later than seven. Where had I been for the extra hour? Who was it I'd been screwing, ungrateful little bastard that I was?
I tried to explain that the Southern Restaurant, where we had gone for dinner, was crowded, and that we had to wait a long time. She wouldn't even let me finish a sentence. Of all of her tirades, this was the worst.
The bile built up in me, my throat got tight, and I found myself out of breath. For the first time since childhood I lost control. I gave her a hard, open-handed whap across the face, knocking her sprawling against the easel, which came clattering down on top of her, canvas, paints, and all.
"Shut up, you fucking bitch! I screamed. "I've taken all the shit out of you I'm going to take. I'm tired of being a goddamn slave around here, waiting for you to get drunk and blow up at me. So from now on I come and go when and where I please, and I screw who I please, and if it pleases me to screw nobody because of you, then I screw nobody.
"But next time you dare open that mouth of yours to me, I swear to God I'll knock that fucking ass of yours right through the nearest wall."
I was panting, as though I had just run a great distance, and I was shocked at myself. Those words had come from me. Not only had I yelled back at her, but I had knocked her onto her behind. I knew what I had done, but still couldn't quite believe it.
If the situation hadn't been so tense it would have been comical. There was beautiful Mora, sitting spread out on the floor, the easel tilting crazily over her shoulder, the canvas face-down across her knees, and tubes of paint squashed all over her. Her sensuous brown eyes registered surprise, then indignation, and then became calm. When I had finished yelling at her I could swear I saw the beginning of a smile in the corners of her mouth, and her eyes showed that humorous glint that I remembered the first day we met.
With as much dignity as possible considering the position she was in, she arose and with a sudden serenity began to walk from the room.
"You can throw me out if you want," I said quietly.
Mora turned to look at me. With a smile on her face, her eyes filled slowly with tears, which overflowed and began to roll down her cheeks. She came to me and put her head on my shoulder for a minute, kissed me good night with a great tenderness, headed to the back bedroom, and closed the door. I went into the living room and lay on the bed. I watched the millions of lights around the Bay twinkle brightly in the crisp, winter air. How many sunsets had we seen together? How many sunrises? How many times had we made love on this bed, with the whole Bay Area stretching out before us? I thought about those first nights together, with passion all new and fresh; of all that Mora had taught me about women, about life, about getting along in the world as a man instead of as a boy.
She had taught me so much more than just technique. From her I had learned that, while technique is important, it's just one aspect of a relationship, and that compassion, tenderness, and caring about your woman were even more important. After that night with April, Mora told me that she had tried to teach me to love like a lesbian with a cock, because only a woman really knew how to please another woman. She said that if a man could only learn, it would be the most important lesson in loving he would ever know. She had been my tutoress in so many things I couldn't even remember them, because they had become a part of my personality.
Thinking back, I was beginning to wallow in sentimentality, and was toying with the idea of going to the back bedroom to apologize. But my old penchant for common sense kept telling me not to go, kept telling me that if I did, I would belong to her body and soul, and that next time breaking free would not be so easy. By thinking this way, I realized that I had made a decision: it was time to go, time to get on with my life. My future was not in this apartment, or with the lovely Mora. She was just another course in life that I had taken, and passed.
That Monday, when I returned from school, I found a legal-size envelope on the hall table addressed to me. Inside was a letter, written in Mora's small, neat hand. My darling Richard,
I know you will think me a coward for not personally saying what I have to say, but believe me, I have good reasons, and breaking down and crying and changing my mind are not the least of them.
Almost six months ago we saw each other for the first time. I don't know how you felt, but I wanted you immediately; not just because you looked young and sexy, but because I saw a potential for development in you that I wanted to help you realize.
I was not wrong in my judgment.
You must know that there have been others before you, and that there will be others after you. But never mind them. I want you to know and to always remember how much joy you have given me (anything I felt besides joy wasn't your fault), and I don't just mean in bed.
I have had the joy of guiding your growth from a gangling, awkward, ex-stud hustler to a rounded young man-mature jar beyond his years, confident and ready to take on the world.
I have to confess I had some selfish reasons, too. I want you always to remember who taught you how to make love, how to judge women as persons worthy of your knowing, how to eat properly, order in a restaurant, dress like a man, drink, smoke, drive a car, how to carry about you the aura of authority that is so important in life, and so much more I don't even remember myself. It's important to me, because even though you may know a thousand women after a while, and even though their faces and identities and names may blur in your memory and become confused, you will never forget me. I will be planted firmly in your mind until you die. You may not have loved me, but Mora will always be Mora to you, apart from and above all the others, whoever they may be. You will carry memories of me in every bed in which you sleep, every woman's body you please. I know that I will never be forgotten.
But the most important thing is that I taught you (I hope) about love and morality and what it should be. I hope I caught you early enough to undo any emotional damage your parents, your church, and this sick society might have done to you.
For me, my love, it's too late. I can tell you that life should be lived peacefully and joyfully and free of guilt, but try as I might, I can't live it that way myself. So I smoke too much, drink too much, and have a violent, unreasonable temper. Even though I tell myself that everything I like to do is okay, I live in perpetual guilt; it's with me all the time, like a toothache, and there's no dentist around. Even the simple, pleasurable act of sucking your cock fills me with guilt. Some things from my past fill me with guilt. My love of my own sex fills me with guilt.
That horrible triumvirate, parents, church, and society, got to me too young, too much. And now I feel eternally as though-I am about to be struck dead by a wrathful, vengeful God, who will punish me for the pleasure I have had. I know it's illogical and unreasonable, and I can cite my own arguments better than you can, but the fact remains that my personality has been too badly damaged by my youth. I still feel the guilt. It is my best and most loving hope for you that you never do.
I have made of you a pleasure-giver, and I hope you will always be able to give and receive pleasure with a clear mind and a clean conscience, as nature intended you to do.
You may not have realized it at the time, but last night you declared your independence of me with one well-deserved blow to my face. I have to, sadly, admit the fact that there is no more I can give to you. To keep you with me now would just be a waste of your life, and each day is too precious to throw away in that manner. You don't love me, and any love you think you might feel is just gratitude misplaced. You are ready to leave, ready to go out on the long search for your own love, an arduous and lonely task that might consume years of your life, if not your entire life.
I am moving in for a week with Mary Ann. She's an older dyke type, quite heavy, but I have always found comfort and solace in her arms (and I even feel guilty about that). Anyway, I hope this will give you enough time to find a new place and to move your things out. If you want, I'll keep talking to your mother on the phone, so she'll think you're still living here. Leave any phone messages on the hall table, and the mail, too. Please don't worry about me. Somewhere out there is another Richard, another young boy with the look of potential about him for Mora to retrain and send out into the world as a man, as I have done with you.
But so far
you were the best of them all
the very best
love,
Mora
I slowly put down the letter on the table; then, changing my mind, picked it up, folded it neatly, and tucked it under the cover of my school Peechee note folder, to be put in a safe place later. I wanted to save it.
I felt empty and terribly alone. For the first time the house seemed strange and unfriendly. I was now an intruder, and I wasn't so sure of the maturity that Mora said I was supposed to have. Being totally alone for the first time made my stomach feel queasy, no parents to run home to, and no Mora to guide me. I didn't want to stay there another day; it seemed haunted, and every piece of furniture, every wall, every picture mocked me. I went right to the kitchen and found the morning paper, and got out the furnished-apts-for-rent section.
It took me about a week to find a place that was decent and that didn't ask for identification and references. I had no evening jobs to play that week and continued to study out of habit. The big bed was so empty, so sterile, without her. I read until late, trying to keep my eyes off of the view, which, in its immenseness and grandeur, made me feel smaller and lonelier.
After a terrible first night I masturbated myself to sleep, not even forming erotic mental images, just moving to get it off, humping into the soft mattress and sleeping exhausted on my wet cum, uncaring when it turned cold.
My new apartment was on Clay Street, just off of upper Fillmore. It was a home owned by a retired couple who had a small apartment downstairs, with its own entrance from the walk that ran down the side of the house. There was a low iron fence in front and a neatly trimmed patch of lawn breaking the monotony of the cement sidewalk extending down the block. The area was nice and that part of Fillmore Street was a shopping center for the wealthy people from Pacific Heights. Mora and I had shopped there often, as it was only about ten blocks from her flat.
The apartment itself wasn't much, but it was neat and dean. The living room was large, and there was a sofa which pulled out into a bed, a chair and ottoman, a table with two chairs, a small desk, and an unfinished-furniture bookcase. A green curtain at the back of the room separated the kitchen, which was very small, just an apartment stove, sink, and refrigerator, courtesy of Sears. The bathroom had a small, stand-up shower, an old commode, and a sink with a mirror hung over it, shoved into the corner. A bare light bulb hung from the bathroom ceiling. The rent was eighty-five dollars on a month-to-month basis, so in the event that the owner's children decided to visit from Florida, I could be thrown out on short notice.
I loaded my things into the car, cleaned up Mora's place, taking a last, nostalgic look around, and moved on with my life.