I have learned two things well in the course of several years of absorbing (if occasionally hectic) research. The first, is that, in the realm of sexual behavior, there is absolutely nothing that the mind of man can envision which is not being enthusiastically practiced by someone somewhere. You may give your imagination free rein, you may concoct the most impossible sexual fantasy, and you may take it for granted that someone is at this very moment doing precisely what you’ve just invented, and has done it before and will do it again.
Secondly, the extremes of sexual behavior float, like icebergs, with their bulk well below the surface, forever unexposed. Thus not only does everything exist, but everything exists to a far greater degree than visible evidence would seem to indicate. Most men and women lead lives of quiet depravity.
We can interpret this as we wish. We can view it as evidence of the extreme decadence of our culture or of the immensely evil and perverse nature of humankind. Or, on the other hand, we can rejoice in the fact that, however desperate and disparate our urgings, we are not alone.
— JWW
Gordon & Rita & June
JWW: Gordon and Rita Parris live on a thirty-eight acre farm in southern Ohio not far from the Kentucky line. They do not work the farm. Gordon owns and operates a hardware and plumbing supply business in a town about fifteen miles from their home. While the business is prosperous, their life style does not reflect this. The old house is simply furnished. A color television console and a new station wagon are the sole marks of affluence. Gordon and Rita share the house with several dogs and cats, their three-year-old son, and Rita’s sister, June.
Gordon is tall, balding, thirty-eight, with rugged mountaineer features and a warm but infrequent smile. Rita, thirty-four is dark and although slender, her body remains soft and feminine. Her manner is withdrawn and introspective. June, thirty-one, bears a strong resemblance to her older sister but appears more than three years Rita’s junior. Her face is open where Rita’s is reserved, and there is more warmth and vitality in her conversation.
At the time of the interview June, the sister, was several months pregnant, and just beginning to show.
GORDON: Something like this, now, you tend to look back off it and try to say just how it started. Rita and I will be married eight years next spring, and it’s just over four years that it all got started with June. But sometimes it seems as if it was going on long before that, see, because the desire was always there. Even before we were married, when Rita and I were first seeing each other, of course June would be around a lot, and I always liked her. We always cared for each other.
Of course I never thought of all of this in terms of going to bed. Of having sex. Not that I didn’t think, well, it would be nice to go to bed with that girl. You take a normal man and put a good-looking girl in front of him and he’s going to have that sort of thought whether it’s in his mind to do anything about it or not. It’s just in the nature of a thought. Like I might have the thought, now, if that wasn’t Rita’s sister, or if I weren’t seeing Rita, now, I might want to do something about that. But at the time it never went any further than that, not even in my mind. It was the same as you’re driving along the street and you see a girl walking down the street and you have the thought that she’s attractive, that you wouldn’t mind getting next to her, but it’s no more than a thought and you don’t even hit the horn, you don’t even slow down, you just keep driving along to get wherever it is that you’re going.
Rita and I didn’t get married right off. We were seeing each other for about three years. I was working for a man outside of Dayton, he had a hardware business there, and I wasn’t making much money and out of that I had to support my mother. I have a brother in the Merchant Marine and he would send money when he could but even so I wasn’t fixed well enough to get married, especially with trying to put money aside for a business of my own. I would drive on down here after work and than we would go for a ride or see a movie or just sit and have coffee with June and their Pa, and then I would have to drive on home.
We would be seeing each other quite regular, and then not so much for a while, and then regular again. Sometimes I would see other girls in between, but it never stuck. I would be all the time trying to think of something to say to them, whereas with Rita I would just relax and be myself. I never felt uncomfortable. Even if it was just a matter of sitting in front of the television and neither of us saying much at all, I always felt at ease with Rita, and I guess I knew a long time before we talked about getting married that sooner or later I would marry Rita.
I was always easy with June, too, as far as that goes. It was much the same in some ways, although of course it was Rita I was going with and June was her sister, her kid sister. And June being younger she did seem like a kid in certain ways. She was a kid to Rita, and their Ma being dead for so many years, Rita tended to be the mother of the family and to be always looking out for June.
Now and then when things weren’t going right with Rita and myself it would cross my mind that if Rita went and married somebody else I might think about getting something started with June. But that was just in the back of my mind once in a while and nothing more than that.
RITA: I think I always knew Gordon and I would get married. All the time we were going together, I knew it. We were just right for each other from the beginning. Once I was through school and spending all my time here with Pa and June, I never really saw anybody. I dated some in high school but not so much, you know, and except for Gordon I scarcely saw anybody once I started seeing him. Once in a while I would meet a boy and we might go to a movie, but then either he wouldn’t call again or I wouldn’t want to see him, so I never really went with anybody but Gordon, and I knew it was just a question of when he would be in a position to marry me, with his mother and getting a start in business and all of the rest of it.
As for Junie, I never thought about her and Gordon that way. I was just glad they liked each other, they got along so well together. But Gordon got on well with my Pa, and it was the same way to me, and I thought about it the same way and was glad the same way, that he was like one of the family to them.
GORDON: Rita and I commenced having intercourse just under a year before we got married. This was something that was a long time coming. I had had some experience but not very much of it. It was mostly with girls that were that way, that they would do it for anyone, and you went out with them once and had it with them and that was all there was to it. There were other girls that I would go out with regularly before I met Rita, but I had never had intercourse with any of them, only with what you might call the tramps, the easy girls. There were, I guess, seven of those, and twice with prostitutes when I was in the service, and that was about the whole extent of it. Of course with the girls I dated we would park and pet, but there was a big difference between parking and petting and having the whole thing. I don’t know why it should be that way, thinking about it now, but there was always a great distinction between going all the way and not.