Standing at the kitchen sink in the small duplex she shared with her husband, Roger, Diane Slater stared gloomily out through the window at the cold, rolling fog which had come in over San Francisco's Richmond District from the ocean. Damn, but she hated the fog! It made everything so dark and cheerless, so lonely.
She finished washing the last of the breakfast dishes and put them in the rack to drip dry. Then she emptied the dishpan and wiped her hands on a dishtowel. In the living room, she fluffed the couch cushions and straightened the magazines on the coffee table and emptied the ashtrays – every day, prosaic chores, fraught with dullness.
She wished it were tomorrow, Saturday, and Roger were home. At least they could get out then, go for a ride down the coast to Monterey or across the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County, anywhere just so long as they got out of The City for a few hours. But it wasn't Saturday, and Roger wasn't home. Roger was making neat columns of figures in his ledger books, or whatever it was Chief Accountants at Waller, Waller, Crist, and Maxwell did during, working hours.
Diane sat down in the big overstuffed armchair. It was cold in the front room, and she had gotten a small chill. Well, it was always cold in there. She'd asked Mr. Comstock, the landlord, to have the wall furnace checked for malfunction, and he had said he would see to it; but that had been two weeks ago, and no one had come around yet.
I don't know why we can't afford a better place than this, she thought. Roger makes good money, almost a thousand dollars a month, and we live like we're in the throes of poverty. Well, I'm tired of it. We've been married for two years now, and we have almost eleven thousand dollars saved. That ought to be enough for that split-level in San Bruno that Roger is always talking about buying, shouldn't it? At least for the down payment, and for new furniture and appliances and things like that?
But every time she broached the subject to him, he put her off. "We still don't have enough money saved," he told her. "I don't want to owe anybody anything when we make the move, Diane. I want to be free and clear and independent; I want to own everything outright. That's real security."
Well, that was fine. But wasn't she entitled to some security now? She didn't even have transportation – Roger took their four-year old Plymouth to work every day – and if she wanted to go downtown shopping she had to walk half a mile to a bus line and then transfer twice. What kind of life was that for a healthy young woman? All she had to do all day was sit in this duplex apartment and watch television or read, waiting for Roger to come home and offer her a few kind words and some companionship.
Diane stood up and went into the bedroom and began to make the large double bed. Was she being unfair? Was she being too demanding? No, she didn't think so. She only wanted what other young married couples had – while she was still young enough to fully enjoy them.
No, if anybody was too demanding it was Roger. Physically demanding. She shuddered involuntarily as she tucked the bottom section of the sheet under the mattress. It seemed to her sometimes that that was the only reason Roger married her in the first place: for her body. All he ever thought about was sex. He wanted to make love almost every night, and then in all kinds of perverted positions and ways. He had even tried to make her kiss him… there, on that monstrous penis of his…
Diane shuddered again. The thought of Roger's huge, purplish, rock-hard member, tearing into her defenseless vagina, made her tremble with fright. He was like an animal at times, saying lewd things to her in bed, saying foul words that rang like the bell of doom in her ears and brought tears to her eyes. Didn't he know how to be gentle, to be patient? She had been a virgin when she married him, he had known that better than anyone. She had told him about her strict religious upbringing, about how the word sex had never been mentioned in her household, told him frankly about that because she wanted to be a good, passionate wife to him. All she had asked was that he be patient with her, give her time to develop her sexual desires, to throw off the inhibitions her environment had subconsciously built within her. He had promised that he would.
And then he had all but raped her on their wedding night.
God, what a travesty that had been! She remembered it clearly, the shy way she had come to his arms in the little honeymoon cottage in Carmel, trembling with fear and – yes, with expectation, too – only to be violated unmercifully by that gigantic monster between his legs…
She simply did not understand it. There had been nothing in Roger's manner when they were dating to indicate this was the way he was. Oh, she had been curious, of course, and had allowed minor petting – allowed him to play with her breasts, and to kiss them once or twice. But he had always stopped when she asked him to. Even that one night on Lookout Drive in Marin County, where they had gone after dinner at Sabella's to look at the Bay three months before they were married.
Diane remembered that night vividly now, blushing a little at the recollection. She had drunk a little too much wine with the broiled lobster, and had fallen into a giggly, playful mood, almost a teasing mood. She hadn't meant to let things get as far as they had, and she was sorry afterward that it had happened. But it had happened…
They had parked in a small turnout, in a grove of eucalyptus trees. The view of the Bay, with its millions of tiny, winking lights had been breathtaking. And the mood had been full and golden in the starlit sky. She had moved close to Roger, nuzzling against him, and his arms had gone around her. He had kissed her then, lightly at first, then more ardently, his tongue flicking over her lips, and she had felt a stirring deep in her stomach, responding to his mouth, accepting his tongue deep inside her own.
Before she quite knew what was happening, his hands had been on her breasts, lightly, stroking gently, and a warm lethargy had taken hold of her. His touch was so good on her body! She had kissed him more passionately, and when his hands strayed down inside the low-cut front of her summer dress, she had made no immediate move to stop him. It was only when fingers deftly slid the dress straps from her shoulders and pulled the front down to expose the creamy white globes of her full, darkly pink-nippled breasts that she had felt the first tinges of panic.
She had tried to pull away. "No, n-no, Roger, we mustn't! We… can't go any… further!" she had said, breathlessly. But his head had dipped down and his lips had closed around one of the rigid pink nipples, sucking it gently, rolling his tongue along it. She had felt blind, wild passion surge through her at the contact of his mouth, and in those few seconds her resistance had melted. He sensed this, and his hands had begun to stroke her soft, vibrant legs, moving higher, sliding the short skirt of the dress up on the smooth white flesh of her thighs. His fingers had traversed the down-soft surface of her inner thighs until they almost touched the moistening mound of her pantie's crotch band, his mouth moving urgently on her breast now.
"No, no, no!" she had moaned, but it was an ineffectual cry and the sensations which coursed through her were new, and strange and wonderful. Her brain had been reeling, torn between the sensuous manipulations of Roger's mouth and hands – and the inbred concept of sexual contact before marriage as a cardinal sin. She wanted to be free of his warm, wet lips, his moving hands, and yet she didn't. A battle raged in her mind as Roger's hands raised the dress even higher, bunching it about her waist, and his hands had taunted her smooth, flat stomach. Suddenly, his fingers were inside the elastic waist band of her panties, touching the soft pubic mound within, moving down to touch the slightly quivering passage of her naked vagina. The touches of his fingers there sent rippling waves of ardor boiling and flooding into her brain, numbing it, and she gave herself up momentarily to the new sensations in her loins as he gently parted the soft virginal pubic hair and slowly insinuated a finger into her tender, sensitive cunt, so wet from the passion fluid seeping from its trembling walls, expanding the small membranous opening which denoted her virginity. Then he had found the tiny, oscillating bud of her clitoris and begun to stroke it lightly with the tip of his finger, causing her to cry up into his mouth with sheer delight. It was so good, so good, and at that moment she didn't care if it was wrong, it felt so wonderful…
But then she had heard the whisper of his zipper, and her eyes had flown open and the spell was broken. She looked down in sudden, consuming terror to see the huge, blue-veined length of his erect cock held lewdly in his free hand. She watched in fascinated horror as it seemed to jerk spasmodically, and a thin oozing liquid seeped from the tiny glans opening.
"Baby… baby, I… need you, I want you. Oh Jesus Diane, I want you so Goddamned much…" Roger had moaned, and with his other hand he had begun to pull her panties down.
She had begun to struggle then. "No, Roger, stop, stop!" she had screamed. She strove with all her efforts against him, trying to free herself from his grasp, but he was too strong for her. He had forced her down on her back on the seat, and she had felt that warm sticky head of his cock against her thigh, felt it trembling there as he tried to work its impossible length upward to her pure, defenseless vaginal opening. She squeezed her legs tightly together, still struggling, still fighting, and then Roger had cried out, "Oh Christ, oh son of a bitch, I'm going to cum, I'm going to cum!" His member seemed to jerk out of control against her leg, and then Diane felt a great warm floodtide of hot liquid flow along her thighs, inundate her fleecy golden pubic hair, drench the soft, still quivering folds of her cunt. It was as if she were being drowned in a never-ending torrent of sticky sperm as he moaned and writhed convulsively above her…
Afterward, they had sat in shameful silence in the car, and Diane had cried uncontrollably. He had tried to comfort her, to tell her he was sorry, but she had refused to allow him to touch her. She had felt soiled and dirty and humiliated. But later, when she had calmed down enough to look at things rationally, she had realized Roger was contrite, and as miserable as she. He begged her to forgive him, and told her that he wouldn't touch her again until they were man and wife. And she had forgiven him, because it was partially her fault. She accepted that partial blame, and told him so, and confessed that she had allowed things to get well out of hand.
There had been no more episodes after that. Not until their wedding night, when he had never given her the opportunity to allow her sexual excitement to build normally and had attacked like some demented, mindless beast…
Diane felt her stomach churning as she recalled the Lookout Drive occurrence, and her wedding night. The chill seemed to be stronger now, and she shivered more violently. A good, hot bath, that was what she needed. To soak away the chill – and some of the memories with it.
She finished making the bed and went into the bathroom. She put the stopper in the tub and ran water into it, testing the temperature as she twirled the two chrome handles. When it was just as she liked it, hot but not too hot, she undressed quickly, folding her plaid skirt and frilly white blouse and her under things in a neat pile on top of the clothes hamper. As she waited for the tub to fill completely, she looked at herself critically in the full-length mirror attached to the back of the bathroom door.
She was a small woman, barely three inches over five feet, but her body was beautifully and symmetrically proportioned. Her blonde hair hung long and when she let it fall down across her shoulder it covered partially her full, round breasts. She did that now, and thought: I look very sensual that way, almost brazen. She swept the hair back again, studying the creamy white skin of her breasts, with their marbled and blue-veined translucence, the dark areolas making large, perfect accents for her small, now-rigid nipples. She raised her arms over her head, stretching her tits taut, looking like a classic nude sculpture in pose.
She stood that way for a long moment, letting her eyes move down across the flat surface of her stomach, past the tiny puckered outline of her navel. The triangle of her womanness was silky and golden, very fine, highlighting the pink fullness of her vaginal lips. She could see the tip of her clitoris peeking out from the soft puffy slit in an almost childish shyness there.
She pirouetted lightly, examining the dimpled roundness of her satiny buttocks, the rippling muscles in the backs of her slim, tapered thighs. The veins in the soft hollows in back of her knees were prominent, tantalizingly so, and her calves and ankles were shapely.
I have a good body, she thought. I really do. But it hasn't brought me any physical happiness in two full years of marriage. I can understand, certainly, why Roger becomes so aroused at the sight of me nude. That much I can understand, and it pleases me; my ego is as strong as any other woman's, and it's so nice to know that I have an attractive body. But what I can't understand is why Roger treats me the way he does. I always thought men respected beauty of form, protected it – not flailed it as if it were something terribly ugly, to be sneered at and scorned and treated with contempt…
Diane became aware of a wafting cloud of steam and realized that the tub was filled almost to the brim. She turned off the faucets and tested the water with her hand. A little hot, but that was fine; she was so cold. She stepped into the tub, felt the heat of the water envelop her as she slowly sank down, banishing the cold, filling her with a relaxed, almost contented feeling as she lay back with her head touching the rear lip of the porcelain.
She lay there for almost ten minutes, relaxing, blanking her mind to all but the lethargic warmth of the water. And then the sounds began to filter through the thin walls of the duplex.
Diane stiffened in the tub, even though the words were at first indistinguishable. Damn that Judy Carneal! she thought. She's entertaining some man again in the middle of the day. Why, she's nothing better than a… a whore, the way she carries on! Men always in her place, always different men, coming at all hours of the day and night. Not that it's any of my business what she does, but these walls are so paper thin that you can hear practically everything that's being said and that's going on over there…
A man's voice said suddenly, distinctly, "Come on, baby, let's do it right here."
"Ahh, Harry, not in the bathroom," Judy Carneal's voice answered clearly. "We'll go in the bedroom, honey."
"No, right here. I've always wanted to have my cock sucked in the john."
"Well… all right."
"That's it, baby. Take off that housecoat so I can see those big tits of yours while you suck me."
"How's this, Harry?"
"Beautiful, baby, just beautiful. Damn, but you got a fine set on you. Come over here so I can feel your cunt… Good, good. How do you like that, baby?"
"Mmmmmm!" And then, "Take your cock out, Harry. Let me see that big monster of yours."
"Okay… there it is."
"Oh, Harry, it's so hard! It's like a chunk of granite, Harry! God, what a beautiful cock!"
Diane lay rigid in the warm bath water, listening, holding her breath. Dear God! she thought. They… they were disgusting! They were sick, disgusting degenerates! He… he wants Judy to… to kiss his… penis and she's going to do it! She's going to take his big ugly throbbing penis, like Roger's, between her full red lips and… and…
"That's it, baby," the man's voice groaned. "Stroke it a little, that's it, run your fingernails along my balls… easy, damn you, easy…"
"There, honey. How does that feel?"
"Oh, Christ, get down on your knees, will you? Start sucking it, you bitch, start sucking it!"
I can't listen to any more of this! Diane's mind screamed. I've got to get out of here! It's sick… lewd… disgusting… But she only lay motionless in the warm water, holding her breath, feeling a strange series of involuntary sensations churning deep in the pit of her own stomach as she listened to the salacious conversation filtering through the thin wall separating the two duplex bathrooms.
"There… ahhhhh… oh, that's nice, Judy baby, the inside of your mouth is like warm butter! Oh Jesus, that's… ahhhhh…! That's real nice, baby!"
"Ummmmmmmmmmm!"
"You know how to… ahhhhh… suck it, oh Jesus you really know how to suck cock, baby! You love cock in your mouth, don't you… don't you… oooohhhhh, agggghhhh, ummmmmm!"
Stop it, stop it, stop it! Diane screamed silently. But she looked down at her breasts and saw that the nipples were turgid now, jutting up from the gently bobbing globes of her breasts like mountain peaks on some lonely Pacific island. A tender aching had begun between her legs, in spite of the revulsion she felt at the words she was hearing. She moved her hand from the side of the tub and touched her breasts, touching one of the nipples, and then pulled her hand back quickly. The contact of her own fingers had intensified the aching in her cunt. Dear God, what was happening to her? Had… had she become sexually aroused listening to that filth next door? No, no… but it was true. Her entire being quivered beneath the tepid bath water.
"Oh Christ, Judy, Judy, suck it… suck it!" the man groaned through the wall. "Yes, that's it that's… it… milk it dry, you hot little bitch… suck me dry… ohhhhhhh!"
The inside of Diane's mouth was dry, and she ran her pink tongue over her lips several times, trying to dispel the arid, cottony taste. She found herself trying to picture in her mind the position Judy Carneal and the man, Harry, were in. He was sitting on the toilet seat… yes, that was it, sitting on the toilet seat with his legs spread wide and Judy was kneeling between them, her long auburn hair fanning out over his belly and abdomen, taking his blood-swollen shaft into her mouth and suckling it, up and down, up and down, up and down…
A wave of shame caused her to flush a violent crimson. She was no better than they were! Thinking lewd, filthy thoughts, working herself up into an impossible froth… Suddenly, she wished Roger were home. She was aroused, all right, there was no purpose in deluding herself that she wasn't. For the first time in two years, she was sexually ready; if Roger were only here she would gladly accept his huge penis now, she needed release, needed it desperately…
"That's it, that's iiiiitttt! Tickle my balls, baby… tickle them… holy Christ, I'm almost there… suck it harder, Judy… harder… harderrrr…! Aaaaggggghhhhh, ohhhhhhhh!"
Diane lifted her hand from the edge of the tub again and began to massage her right breast, slowly, rhythmically. God, I'm sorry, I'm sorry! her mind almost screamed. But I don't care, I can't stand it! Her mind had blotted out all the evils she had been led to believe came from masturbation. There was only her urgency now, her need for release from the intense arousal of her body by the lustful activities beyond the paper thin bathroom wall.
She continued to massage her breast, avoiding the nipple at first, cupping the creamy naked globe in her long slim fingers, kneading the translucent flesh, causing whirlpools of passion to seethe within her. Then she touched the nipple with her thumb, felt it diamond hard. She rolled the ball of her thumb back and forth across the erect bud, intensifying further the rising crescendo of sexual frenzy.
Diane arched her back, raising her hips off the tub bottom, lifting her stomach and the dripping, hair-covered mound of her loins out of the water. She braced her body by pressing the soles of her feet to the porcelain, and then lifted her left leg out of the water, hooking it over the side of the tub, opening wide the soft, fluted edges of her cunt. Still she massaged her now wildly trembling breast, teasing the nipple, pinching it between thumb and forefinger until it throbbed like a thing alive.
From next door, Harry screamed, "I'm… going to cum, baby! Suck it, bitch, suck it suck it suck it… aaaaggghhhh, I'm cumming, I'm… cummmmiinngggg, aaaahhhhggg!"
Diane could stand it no more. Her other hand dipped down between her widespread thighs. It was wet with something else besides the water, with the secretion of her passion. She gentled her finger into the moist flesh, and the feeling generated by her own fingers was so very, very good. She manipulated the soft hair lined inner lips until she could feel them swelling with the rush of blood, and her clitoris was rigid and tingling. Her index finger came in contact with the trembling bud, and she began to gasp with total abandoned delight as she felt release imminent. Her hips thrashed the bath water and her hand squeezed her breast, released it, squeezed it harder. Faster, faster, faster her finger rubbed across the sensitive clit, blanking her mind of all thoughts, all sanity; nothing existed for her in that moment except the delirious coming of her impending climax…
And then she was there!
She was cumming like a wild woman!
Her hips flailed frantically at the water, beat it to a froth, as wave after wave after maddening wave of intense, bursting release seized her. Pinwheels of light, in kaleidoscopic colors, appeared in back of her eyes and she cried out, once, in pleasure so acute it was like pure pain. As her orgasm began to ebb, her buttocks sank back to the porcelain bottom of the tub and her hand stilled but did not leave her cunt. She lay there, not moving, her eyes squeezed tightly shut and her chest rising and falling spasmodically.
From next door: "Jesus, Judy, there's nobody who sucks cock like you do. Nobody a-tall! You got every last Goddamned drop in my nuts down that throat of yours!"
"I'm glad you liked it, Harry honey. Now how about doing the same for me? My pussy's on fire!"
"All right. And after that, I'm gonna throw a fuck into you like you never had before. And that's a promise."
"What are we waiting for?"
There was the sound of a door being opened, and then closed, and then there was only silence. Diane lay there, listening disappointedly to that silence, and sanity returned to her satiated brain.
With it came abject mortification.
She was sick with the knowledge of what she had just done, of the act of carnal self-abuse that she had performed on herself. What was the matter with her? Was she so starved for love that she had to resort to masturbation for satisfaction? Was this what Roger's animalistic love-making had driven her to? Would she repeat time and again these self-manipulations in order to achieve emotional release?
The questions churned and twisted in Diane's mind. She felt sick to her stomach, and… impure, as if her body were harboring thousands of tiny, invisible, creeping things. Abruptly, she stood up in the tub and switched on the shower, letting the needle spray grow as hot as she could stand it and then lathering herself from head to toe with scented feminine soap.
At the end of ten minutes, she began to feel a little better. She stepped out of the shower, refusing to allow her mind now to dwell on what had happened only minutes earlier. She toweled herself dry briskly, not even looking at her glowing pink-red body in the full-length mirror. She dressed hurriedly, and went out to the kitchen.
This day was wrong, all wrong. Last night, she had told Roger that she would have something special for him when he came home from work this evening, but hadn't told him what. It would be a surprise. What she had been planning was a very fancy shrimp Creole for his supper, his favorite dish, with a bottle of good Chablis she had bought from savings out of her grocery money, and candlelight, and soft music; it had been her idea to get him in a gentle, tender, loving mood, so that later on, when they went to bed, Roger would come to her as a husband and a lover – not as a brute. But then the loneliness of the morning had taken hold of her, and the old bitterness at his treatment of her over the past two years, and now the… the scene in the bath tub… Well, it was all spoiled now. She didn't even want to think about sex or love, much less about making the complicated shrimp dish from her grandmother's recipe.
Still, she had to have something with which to occupy her time for the rest of the day, until Roger came home. It was barely noon now, and the prospect of simply sitting in front of the TV screen for the remainder of the afternoon had no appeal at all for her. Too, there was the fact that she had already bought all of the preparations for the Creole – fresh, deveined shrimp and green peppers and garlic and paprika and stewed tomatoes…
Well, she might as well make it now. But there would be none of the Chablis with it, and no candlelight or soft music. It would just be a dinner, like all other dinners. That was all.
Diane opened the refrigerator, took out the shrimp, and set intensely to work on the side-board.