The question posed by the title of this chapter is the same one that confronts almost any emotionally disturbed person under therapy. But it is a question that the patient must “discover” for himself with, of course, the professionally expert guidance of the psychiatrist or psychologist.
This was the vital question that faced Denise Bryant, a very attractive and personable 37 year old high school drama teacher the first day she sat down in my office. The story of Denise and how she found the answer to that question is presented here in approximately her own words:
He stayed locked in the bedroom with her all night long. My 45-year-old boyfriend, Bob, was dressed only in a thin pair of summer pajamas. My lovely 14-year-old daughter, Kathy, had on a pair of sheer blue baby-dolls. How could I, an intelligent woman with over five years of college education, believe that nothing happened?
It seems incredible when I look back on that night over four years ago, that I could have been so completely mesmerized, hypnotically influenced to such an extent by a man so profoundly evil as Bob. Yet Bob was neither the first nor last use at his will and for whatever perverted desires he wanted. My life story is one of strange passions. I say that I have been used by others- both male and female-to satisfy their evil lusts. But my own twisted needs of the flesh are equally to blame.
Where did it all start? Where did it begin? Why?
These are questions that have yet to be completely answered. And only recently have I begun to realize, through analysis, the important parts that my early environment and childhood relationships played in all of this. I have always been a strange person in many ways, a moody and emotional individual of changing moods. Deep involvement in sex has offered me an escape from responsibilities, escape from problems, an escape from life. That is why I have frequently shown all the outward indications of being a true nymphomaniac, insatiable while making love to several people, both at the same time and in turn.
When I first married at the age of 19, it was to flee from something I could not understand, the smothering love and overpowering influence of my dominating and beautiful mother. I was not pregnant when I was married. That happened sometime during the first week. I think I must have driven my husband crazy with my demands. He lost over ten pounds.
He was ready to leave me before Kathy was born. But he was basically a very good and responsible man. And he was also very much in love with me. His main problem was that he hated to see me suffer. It tortured him to watch me bring myself too climax time and again after he was exhausted, temporarily exhausted from three orgasms within two hours.
I prayed to have a son. I had no idea why at the time. I only knew that I wanted a son more than a daughter. The fear was there, but I could not recognize it until Kathy was born. When they told me I had a healthy seven pound little girl, I passed out. I was terrified. When I woke up, I had alternate chills and fever.
Mai, my husband, lasted with me for six years. The details of that period are hazy in my memory. He was a devoted father, but I felt that I loved Kathy more. She was such a beautiful little girl. I let her brown hair grow long and I spent hours combing it. I bathed her in scented soaps and doted over her as if she were the very reason for my existence.
At the same time, my demands upon Mai for more sex than any normal man can handle remained constant. I had to have it. I had the feeling that this was the only thing he owed me when we were alone together. Yet it was I who had the nervous breakdown when he left me. I went to some old family doctor who gave me pills and prescribed a rest.
My parents took care of both me and Kathy. Mai provided well for us with a monthly check. My mother adored Kathy, and my own crying need for love from a man, sexual love, began to be more important to me than my affection for my daughter. The old doctor was not a psychiatrist, but his advice was probably sound. He advised me to go back to college and get my degree. I had always wanted to study drama and then teach it in high school. My own drama teacher had been my ideal.
I was older than most of the other students, but the younger men pursued me as much as they did girls many years younger. I was also attractive because I was a divorcee, because I had money and a car and my own apartment, and if I like a young man he could come and live with me for a while… until I wore him out.
My main attraction, however has always been my looks and my sensuous personality. I don't think any person who needs sex and love as much as I always have can hide that desire. I can spot it in other people instantly, and I am sure that almost any virile male, and some special females, can detect it in me upon sight.
At 37 years of age, I do not look much different than I did in my twenties. This is not boasting necessarily, as I can prove it by photographs, some of them nude and in quite demonstrative postures. I have never posed commercially. These were all taken by men with whom I had serious affairs. I suppose I have been fortunate in that only once has anyone who knows me only as a “respectable” schoolteacher ever seen any of my nudes. And he was quite understanding when he approached me on the subject. The man was a ranking school board official, eager to take off my clothes and see for himself.
I am a little taller than the average woman, I think-five feet and five inches. My measurements are now 36-26-37, a couple of inches more in the waist and hips than when I was 25. And I weigh 125 now, as opposed to 119. My hair is very black and I wear it long usually, but sometimes in a stylish coif atop my head. One of the little things about my body that men find intriguing is the inverted shape of my nipples. My breasts are large and still quite firm, the areola surrounding the nipples large and projecting. Yet the nipples themselves are inverted and must be sucked on quite strongly before they will come out erect. This drives both me and my love partner into a sexual frenzy.
During those five years of college, I would spend summertime at home with my parents and Kathy, which curtailed a great deal of my sexual activity, but at the same time prepared me for the double life I would have to lead as a schoolteacher. I spent the extra year in study in order to earn a master's degree, almost a prerequisite to landing a position as a drama teacher in a good high school.
It was when I was almost through with that final year that Mai remarried and sought to gain custody of Kathy, who heretofore had been visiting him at Christmas time and for a month each summer. Kathy was ten and already showing signs of moodiness and restlessness in the strict environment of my parents, and particularly under the dominating influence of my mother, whose authority she openly rejected. The frictions at home had developed to a high degree.
I met Mai's wife and found her to be quite charming. We seemed to accept each other readily, each in our own role, I the ex-wife, she the quite proper wife and homemaker. I had a terrible fight with my mother over the decision, but I finally agreed to a custody arrangement with Mai. Kathy would live with him and his wife each school year from September to July, and spend two or three months of the summer with me.
I welcomed the new freedom I found, away from my parents, away from Kathy. My job was at a large high school in a good suburban neighborhood of a major metropolitan area in the East. At 29, I was still young, beautiful and sharply attractive, yet I created a facade of serious respectability at my work and for the countless social and professional affairs that demanded my attendance.
Work satisfied me intellectually far more than study. I revolutionized the school's drama department, introducing the study and performance of some of the most modern and contemporary playwrights, alongside Shakespeare and the other classic writers. I talked the school board into the highest drama budget they had ever allowed, and completely redesigned and renovated the backstage and stage of the auditorium.
It was only a matter of time, however, until I realized that work could never completely satisfy me. I went without an interpersonal sex relation for three months, although I masturbated an average of once a week, usually on the weekend, and sometimes for hours on end. At those times, I would become absolutely frantic for a lover, and it was all that I could do to resist the temptation to go downtown to a bar or restaurant and pick up someone for a night of sex.
That three months was the longest I ever had to wait. After that, it was never necessary that I even think about going out to look for sex. Sex had a way of finding me, and a great deal of this had to do with the personality that I spoke of earlier. After I met Bill Britten, nothing was ever quite the same.
Bill was a singularly handsome young man in his late twenties, perhaps two to three years younger than I. He was tall and clean-cut, a veritable prototype of the decent young American man. I noticed him right away as he sat at the table across from me that Saturday morning at the public library where I was doing some research on Eugene O'Neill's plays for possible inclusion in the spring semester curriculum.
He was obviously looking at my legs, which intrigued me greatly. Yet in my newly acquired role of respectable schoolteacher, I instinctively reached down to be certain that my skirt was not revealing too much. Bill frowned, and when I did so, I realized that he had no idea who I was. The public library in the heart of the metropolis was a world removed from the fashionable suburb of Hollins Meadows.-
I crossed my legs and smiled, but I maintained just enough reserve to appear intrigued yet untouchable. I was unsure how to handle such a situation, while my body cried out at the same time to me to take advantage of this rare opportunity.
Suddenly, Bill closed the book he was reading, stood up, and walked toward me. His eyes scouted the reading room to be sure no one was watching. I was holding my breath with excitement, and not a little bit of trepidation, when he was almost upon me. But then to my great surprise and consternation, he walked right on by without so much as looking at me. I was so astonished that I was not even aware at first that he had dropped a folded piece of paper into the open book of O'Neill's MOON OF THE CARRIBBEES AND OTHER PLAYS OF THE SEA, which I had been reading.
When I read the neatly typewritten note, I was more amazed and even intrigued, than alarmed or fearful. It was the first real contact I made with the strange and offbeat element of the sexual underworld that was to rule my life for so long and through so much ecstasy and torment. His message read:
“Dear Miss or Madame: “Please do not be offended. If you have no interest in my offer, I hope you will destroy this note and forget about it.
“I think you have exceptionally beautiful legs. I would like to see more of them. I will give you thirty dollars cash if you will set across from me for about 15 minutes, wearing no pants or girdle, and allow me to feast my eyes upon your private charms. You would be fully dressed otherwise, and I would not touch or molest you in any way.
“I am an educated man from a good family. You can trust me. If you are interested, please meet me in the Rondelet Bar at 5:30 P.M. today.”
“Very sincerely,
“Bill”
The name of the bar and the time were written in ink, and the typewritten message itself had been duplicated. What a very strange man, I thought? How bizarre and unusual an approach. Yet for a person of my make-up, starved for sex, how compelling an invitation. In a purely sexual way, I was just as entranced by the promise of this invitation as a romantic high school girl would be if she were invited out for the prom by the boy of her dreams.
I went home and took a very long and relaxing bath, feeling most wonderful as I luxuriated in a sea of warm water and thick scented suds. I almost gasped for breath when I let my hands slide over my breasts and titillate and agitate my nipples.
While toweling off, I felt that it would be the most natural thing in the world to allow my fingers the free reign they cried out for, to let them caress, press and manipulate the little feminine folds between my thighs, the risen tip of my stimulated clitoris. I held back, however, as I was determined to save every last minute of my sexual energy for this strange and good-looking young man.
While leisurely dressing, I tried on several different skirts and dresses, practicing the art of exposure as I sat down in front of a full-length mirror. The flared cocktail skirt was too awkward.
My blue sheath was so clinging that nothing but raising it to my hips would reveal the deep blackness of my thick triangle.
Ultimately, I settled on a green knit dress that clung lusciously to my breasts and derriere, also displaying a good amount of cleavage from the proper angle with its scoop neck, but with enough flare to the skirt that I could control the exposure of my stockinged thighs and privates most beautifully. I wore no pants or girdle, and attached my stockings to a lace-and-ribbon garter belt that left my buttocks delightfully nude. I felt sure, from what he had written, this would please him greatly.
I was terribly excited, but not nervous. Bill, on the other hand, was a totally nervous wreck when I met him at a small rear booth in the Rondelet Bar at 5:30.
“Oh… have a seat… I… I was wondering if,” he mumbled in a breathless stutter, gulping for air, ”… you'd show up. I thought… well, I thought the way you looked at me, you… you might be the passionate type…”
“Your approach is quite unique, Bill,” I told him with a certain smile, projecting my tightly clad bosom as I sat across from him, “I'll have a scotch and plain water, by the way… And now, let's hear all about you and your exciting life. You look like a man who's done everything.”
“Yeah… uh…,” he continued to mumble uneasily after the waitress took our order, his eyes looking around questioningly, “Uh, let me give you the thirty now, so you'll know I'm on the level..
“Bill! I'm not a prostitute!” I protested with a degree of defensiveness, yet I took the money he offered in order to avoid making a scene. “I didn't come down to meet you just to make thirty dollars.”
“Well… it's better this way,” he insisted, his eyes brightening as he seemed to be gauging the path from the men's room to our booth, “Say… look, honey, I'm going to go back and wash my hands. Now… when I come back, see… I'll be approaching the table so that you'll be facing me. No one else will be facing you, as long there's nobody else walking along by me. So… when you see me coming back, you spread your legs and… fix your skirt or something. I want to see nearly everything… nearly everything, but not quite… okay?”
Before I could answer him, Bill had left the table and was on his way to the men's room. While he was gone, the waitress served our drinks. I then sat so that my legs were almost facing out of the booth, then put my right leg aside as I saw him coming back. I placed both hands on my thighs and raised the skirt. I was absolutely fascinated by all this.
Bill walked toward me very slowly. I could actually see his trousers move with excitement. The situation aroused me terribly and I could feel the rumblings of my own passions deep within my body. This was so strange, so very, very strange to be doing this in a public place with people all around. I know that I felt the excitement and danger of it in somewhat the same way that he did.
“Oh… oh, damn, honey… oh… oh… o-o-oh!” he cried out, muffling his voice with one hand, while his other was on his lap, '©h, honey… whew! You sure can do it. You are good… oh, you are good.”
We both opened up a bit as we sipped our drinks. I was astonished to learn that Bill had played with himself in the men's room and put on a rubber prophylactic. He had become so excited from looking at my legs as he walked back to the table, that he merely stroked his shielded penis to ejaculation through his trousers as he sat down.
But this was hardly the end of our episode. After another drink, he took me to a hotel room, where we had more to drink and talked some more. I was so fascinated by all this, that it tended to partially relieve my building frustrations just to listen to this man talk. Of course, I really wanted sex with him, but I assumed that would follow.
Bill rubbed his trousers and I could see the bulge of his penis, as he talked to me. He had absolutely no qualms about telling me the most sordid aspects of his sex life, and I can recall as if it were today, how his rambling voice sounded, the words he used, and nervous gestures and facial expressions.
“When I was stationed in Korea… oh, that was nice,” he began to go into great detail, his features wrinkling as he took on a somewhat anguished look, “See, I like little girls, and I like young guys too, sometimes, so I pay a hundred bucks a month to this old geek and he lets me sleep with his two girls and his son anytime I want. They were pretty little things about ten or twelve, and their brother was fifteen. He could take it in the rear or go down… and he had a cute little thing on him… yeah…
“I always go to the libraries now, see. I sit at a table across from young girls or women with sexy legs like you, then I drop something on the floor and get down to pick it up. These kids… these girls nine or ten or even thirteen… they wear such short skirts you can see everything…
“Yeah… I been caught a couple of times when I get so hot I play with myself… I can't help it. I become obvious then, and they call a cop, but they can't do a damn thing except hold me and talk to me and threaten to get me locked up in a mental institution. Hell, they won't do that because Dad knows the right people… and I'm an A-plus student at the university…”
Bill's parents were socially prominent. I recognized their name right away when he told me. Also, I recalled hearing that they had a son in his late twenties, who was a perpetual student with degrees in about five different majors. Bill was actually an expert on the Russian language and customs and gave speeches at various organizations. Yet in talking to him on a personal and intimate basis, I would never have realized he was so well educated.
“Now… I'm ready again, honey,” he finally explained, unzipping his trousers and producing his half-erect penis, “You just sit right there… right there, Denise. Now… act like I'm not here, see. You're restless, You keep crossing your legs one way and then the other… let the skirt creep up… you didn't wear pants, did you? Good. Just let the dress work up… then spread your legs when…”
I think I must have been as passionate as he was. The sight of his big penis really affected me. It was so terribly long and slim and young looking.
In the bright light of the room, the shaft appeared to have a shine to it, while the head was soft looking and yielding to his touch. His fingers worked it up and down. He seemed to be milking it, then caressing it in different places. He stroked the penis, then his testicles, then fingered himself beneath it.
I was rolling with passion, moving my hips and thighs in a slight rhythmic motion as I let my skirt creep up. When I could look down and see that it was well over the tops of my stockings, I leaned back and spread my thighs widely apart. I was rolling my head from side to side and I was saying things and gasping. I finally touched myself.
“Oh, Bill,” I cried out in utter despair at last, “aren't you ever going to screw me!”
“Who-o-o… E-e-e-e!” he shouted like a maniac suddenly, and he was ejaculating all over his hand and onto the floor, “Oh… oh-oh, that did it… damn! You are the hottest thing, honey. Every… every Saturday, you've got yourself thirty bucks. Say… is… can you give me your phone number? Sometimes I get where I have to… I mean really have to look up a girl's dress or I'll go crazy… or do something anti-social. Thirty bucks any time I call and need to look…”
Never in my life had I had to beg a man for sex in a situation like that. Yet no amount of begging could bring Bill to allowing more than a kiss upon his penis or buttocks. He spread his cheeks and told me I could lick him there, but I was not that sick… not yet. He absolutely refused to touch me otherwise, and I felt as if I were going mad until he pretended to suddenly hit upon an idea.
“I'll call my buddy, Luke!” he said with a snap of his fingers, going to the phone, “Luke will screw you till you'll beg him to stop. Luke is the best cocksman I know, and he'll pay thirty bucks too. Luke always likes something fresh and good like you, honey. And I'll watch. Damn, I love too watch Luke go at a girl…”
“No… I don't need the money, really,” I began to object, “And who is Luke? He may be some sex maniac or something…”
“Ha-ha… ha-ha-ha!” Bill burst into gales of ribald laughter as he dialed a number, “Luke just likes to screw and eat, honey. I'm the sex maniac. Ha-ha… ha-ha-ha!”
Could this be me? I just sat there and laughed with him. Naturally I was no angel. Sex had played a very strong role in my life. I realized that I was unable to control my urges, had always been searching and seeking for more than just a marital relation or boy-girl romance. I had done a lot of things with a lot of men. But I was not a whore. I was not a pervert.
Or was I?
The idea of Luke excited me, what with the terribly passionate mood I was in. I didn't really care what he looked like or what he did, so long as he used my body and brought me to orgasm time after time. Nor did I completely reject the idea of the money. I had never been able to save because I spent far too lavishly for my nice clothes, my expensive apartment, my late model car. I was used to luxury and constantly sought loans from my indulgent mother, who knew they would never be paid back. She had spoiled me that way all her life and father had never objected. Now that he could, really. My mother dominated him completely.
Luke was a big man in every way. He was almost burly. When he arrived, he was half drunk and needed a shave. Bill had me sitting in the chair facing the door, my dress to my hips and legs spread.
“She looks like yer type, kid… heh-heh,” Luke drooled his words as his hard, steely eyes unglued me with their basic erotic appeal, “She's a good bargain for thirty bucks, I'm thinking. Looks like she might enjoy a bit, eh? Heh-heh…”
Luke tossed three ten dollar bills on the dresser and dragged me out of the chair. He was a strong and virile man of about 45, and as rough as he looked. His coarse beard ground into my face and his tongue scorched my mouth with its rapacious thrusts. My body burned with desire. I wanted this man to enter me, and I reached down to envelope the largest penis I had ever felt. It was ramrod stiff and it throbbed hard.
“I… I want it… hard,” I said exactly what I felt.
“Baby… you are going to get the schnitzel! Heh-heh…,” he laughed crudely.
His laugh was the only thing I didn't like. His hands were amazingly gentle as he undressed me. I writhed across the bed and touched myself while I watched him undress, observed the thickness of his penis. That was the primary feature of his build, not the length, but the thickness. I wanted it, yet I wondered about the penetration.
I screamed when he first entered me, but that did not last long. I was thoroughly lubricated. In fact, my dress was wet from where I had been sitting. I have always secreted profusely, so much so that I sometimes wear a sanitary napkin if I feel that I am going to be unduly aroused without having a chance to remove my clothes. Some men like this characteristic a great deal, particularly those who enjoy going down on me. More about all of that later.
I clung hungrily to Luke and worked my pelvis against him in frantic thrusts, thus starting my series of multiple orgasms. At last, I was in the blessed world of interpersonal sex for which I hungered. The three months of my sexual hermitage was over. I was living again.
And thus began the phase of my life that was utterly devoted to erotic pleasures of every shading, deviation and variation that the human animal can envisage. Bill directed me to a hundred or more intrigues over the next few years, and he was always good for at least one appearance each week or month for us to play our charade of the girl exposing herself so he could look up the dress. There were a thousand variations, yet his reaction and masturbation remained almost the same no matter what little drama I acted out.
I was, in effect, a part-time whore. My income from this enterprise ran as high as two hundred dollars a week on occasion. I moved into a lovely town house, and when Kathy came to spend the summer, I was able to treat her as a veritable fairy princess, buying her all kinds of expensive clothes, jewelry and other gifts and lavishing her with a big allowance and a savings account.
It was sometimes difficult to keep her from finding out about the double-life her sexy mother led, what with her there all the time during the summer. I did, however, think that I was quite successful at this. I never had any of my paying clients in the house while she was there.
Even my “quickie” dates, like the man who stayed only five or ten minutes while I went down on him for ten dollars, were not allowed in the house during the summer. Anyone with whom I was involved sexually, whether for money or my own enjoyment, had to provide the place for lovemaking when Kathy was at home.
Among my activities of those years were flings at every kind of perversion and variation known to man. The men Bill had introduced me to, introduced me to others in turn. I could have all the sex I wanted of any kind, and at any time. I became a veritable nymphomaniac.
Some of my dates took me to swap parties, to stag parties. I experienced many threesomes, including one with a man and his German Shepherd. At some of the swinging parties, I discovered that I had an amazing capability for bi-sexuality. I realized that my admiration of a nicely shaped female body was not altogether esthetic. The first time I went down on a man's wife, I was drunk and I loved it. The next time, I was sober, and I loved it more.
I became involved in what was almost a real love affair with one of the most beautiful girls in this city, Cindy Warwick. Cindy was 24 when I first met her, a full-time call girl who catered to afternoon and early evening rendezvous with some of the richest men in town and from out of town. I suppose one reason I was so intensely attracted to Cindy was that she also led a very strange double life.
Cindy had two darling children and a nice home with a wonderful old woman for a housekeeper. She was a perfect mother, absolutely wonderful with her children. To them and the neighbors, she was a professional freelance writer with an office downtown. The “office” consisted of a lovely one-bedroom apartment where she entertained men for up to a hundred dollars an hour.
It was easy to see how she could command such fees. Cindy was tall, blonde and beautiful. Her figure measured 38-26-38. She loved sex in such a natural and affectionate way with either a man or a woman that there was nothing ever dirty about it with her. She loved everyone, she loved people, and sex was a part of love. I envied her greatly.
I think she fell in love with me about the second time I ever saw her. We had put on a show for this big advertising executive from New York whom Bill had sent over to Cindy's. He had told her he would pay two hundred dollars to watch her go down on a girl. She called me, and we went through the whole business for him. When he left, Cindy looked at me with the sweetest and most touching expression I had ever seen on another girl's face.
“Denise…,” she said, smiling so sweetly as she pushed aside her long blonde hair and sat back down on the bed beside me, “I want to do it for love now… can I?”
I was overwhelmed-that is the only way I can describe it. I opened my legs for her and held her head right between them and I began to have wonderful, wonderful orgasms when I felt her wonderful, soft tongue licking every spot just right, her lips caressing and sucking.
We saw each other quite often after that. It was never involved. We never professed a serious or deep love until much later. But there was more there than merely the superficial aspects of the sexual relationship. We have remained very close to each other.
The fact is that I never became close to anyone during that first four years of my life as a teacher and part-time professional. I lived a full sex life and a full life in my work. The bizarre and unusual became so routine that I suppose I was ripe for some sort of a change when Bob came along.
And when I think of the over-all aspects of the strange mother and daughter element that ran as an undercurrent and more during the next four years, I often wonder if it began when I met Bill in the library and became a wanton, or when I met Bob at a party one night and almost let him take over both my daughter and myself?