But then there was the pressure at home. No matter what she threw down on the table it was never enough.
So when he asked her one day if she would like to go to Chicago with him and open up a new theatre there she consented. She was certain she could handle him all right. Besides, she was dying to get out of New York, away from her parents, and so on.
He behaved like a perfect gentleman. Everything was going beautifully—he had given her a substantial raise, had bought her clothes, had taken her to the best places, all just as she had imagined it would be. Then, one night after dinner (he had bought tickets for the theatre) he came out with it bluntly. He wanted to know if she was still a virgin. She had been only too eager to tell him yes, thinking that her virginity was her protection. But to her amazement he then began a most frank and brutal confession in which he revealed the fact that his one and only obsession was to deflower young girls. He even confessed that it had cost him a pretty penny and had got him into serious scrapes. Apparently, however, he could do nothing to curb this passion. It was perverse, he confessed, but since he had the means to indulge his vice he had not bothered to cure it. He insinuated that there was nothing brutal about his procedure. He had always treated his victims with kindness and consideration. After all, they might well regard him as a benefactor later on. Sooner or later every young woman has to surrender her maidenhood. He would even go so far as to say that, since it had to be done, it were better to entrust the operation to a professional, a connoisseur, so to speak. Many young husbands were so clumsy and ineffectual that they often caused their wives to become frigid. Many a marital wreck might be traced back to that first night, he insisted smoothly and with undeniable truth.
In short, to hear her relate the incident, he was a most excellent pleader, skilled not only in the art of defloration but in the art of seduction.
«I thought to myself,» said Mona, «that if it was to be just once I could let myself do it. He had told me he would pay me a thousand dollars, and I knew what a thousand dollars meant to my mother and father. I felt that I could trust him.» «So you didn’t go to the theatre that night?» «Yes, we did—but I had already promised him that I would go through with it. He said there was no hurry, I wasn’t to worry about it. He assured me it wouldn’t be too painful. He said he could trust me; he had been observing me for a long time and knew that I would behave sensibly. To prove his sincerity he offered to give me the money first. I wouldn’t accept it. He had been very decent to me and I felt that I ought to go through with the bargain before accepting his money. As a matter of fact, Val, I began to take a fancy to him. It was shrewd of him not to push me into it. If he had I might have hated him afterwards. As it is I’m rather grateful to him—though it turned out to be worse than I had imagined it would.»
I was wondering to myself what she meant by this last when to my surprise I heard her saying:
«You see, I had a very tough hymen. Sometimes they have to operate, you know. I didn’t know anything about such things then. I thought it would be a little painful and bloody… a few minutes… and then… Anyway, it didn’t go like that at all. It took almost a week before he was able to break it. I must say he enjoyed it. And he was gentle! Maybe he was just fibbing about it being so tough. Maybe that was just a gag to prolong the affair. Then too he wasn’t so powerfully built. It was short and thick. It seemed to me he got it in all the way, but then I was so jittery that I really couldn’t say. He would stay in me a long tune, hardly moving, but hard as a rock and twitching like a jigger. Sometimes he took it out and played around with it on the outside. That felt marvelous. He could do it an ungodly long time without coming. He said I was built perfectly… that once the skin was perforated I would be wonderful to go to bed with. He didn’t use foul language— like that other brute. He was a sensualist. He watched me, told me how to move, showed me all sorts of tricks… It might have gone on much longer, God knows, if I hadn’t got terribly excited one night. It was driving me crazy, especially when he pulled out and started rubbing it around the lips…»
«You really enjoyed it then?» I said.
«Enjoyed it? I was wild. I know I shocked him to death when finally I couldn’t stand it any longer and I grabbed him and pulled him down on me with all my strength. ‘Fuck, damn you!’ I said, and I pressed against him and bit his lips. He lost his control then and he began to go at it with a vengeance. Even after he had pierced it, though it hurt, I kept on pushing. I must have had four or five orgasms. I wanted to feel it penetrate all the way. Anyway, I had no shame or embarrassment. I wanted to be fucked and I didn’t care any more how much it hurt.»
I was wondering if she would tell me truthfully how long this affair had lasted—after the technical side of it was over. I had my answer almost immediately. She was amazingly frank about it. It seemed to me that there was an unusual warmth about her reminiscences. Made me realize how grateful women are when they have been handled with understanding.
«I was his mistress for quite a while,» she continued. «I was always expecting him to get tired of me, because he had emphasized so strongly that he could only get passionate about a virgin. Of course I was still a virgin, in a sense. I was terribly young, though people always took me for eighteen or nineteen. He taught me a lot. I went everywhere with him, all over the country. He was very fond of me and he always treated me with the greatest consideration. One day I noticed that he was jealous. I was surprised because I knew he had had many women—I didn’t think he loved me. ‘But I do love you,’ he said, when I teased him about it. Then I became curious. I wanted to know how long he expected it to go on, this affair. I was always anticipating the moment when he would find another girl whom he would want to deflower. I dreaded meeting a young girl in his presence.»
«’But I’m not thinking about another girl,’ he told me. ‘I want you… and I’m going to hold on to you.’»
«’But you told me…’ I started to say, and then I saw him laugh…. and I realized at once what an idiot I had been. ‘So that was how you got me, eh?’ I said. And then I felt vengeful. It was foolish of me because he hadn’t done anything to hurt me. But I wanted to humiliate him.»
«You know, I really despise myself for what I did,» she went on. «He didn’t deserve to be treated that way But I derived a cruel satisfaction in making him suffer. I flirted with every man I met—outrageously. I even went to bed with some of them, and then I told him about it and gloated over it when I saw how much it hurt him. ‘You’re young,’ he used to say. ‘You don’t understand what you’re doing.’ It was true enough, but I only understood one thing— that I had the better of him, and that even if I had sold myself to him he was my slave. I delighted in taunting him about his money. ‘Go and buy yourself another virgin,’ I would say. ‘You can probably get them cheaper than a thousand dollars. I would have said yes if you had offered five hundred. You could have had me for nothing if you had been a little cleverer. If I had your money I’d choose a new one every night.’ I would go on like that until he couldn’t stand it any longer. One night he proposed marriage. He swore he would divorce his wife instantly—if I would only say yes. He said he couldn’t live without me. ‘But I can live without you,’ I answered. He winced. ‘You’re
