Sheer heaven. They remained relatively still at first and I rocked back on Arnold, then forward at David, and on each stroke there was the double sensation, the sensation of the one ever-so-gently withdrawing and the other ever-so-gently attacking, and then as we were more comfortable and secure in the position they began to take up the movements, double-fucking me and at the same time using my body to fuck each other. I could never describe this effectively, I could write about it forever and not get it all down. There was so much going on! Perception so acute, all that grass and hash going for us, all that sweet control, that ability to slide one’s concentration into any part of one’s body, and God, God, it was wonderful.
Afterward I lay with utter rivers of sperm dripping out of me fore and aft and feeling like a goddess, a goddess.
Since then we’ve done everything, everyone doing everything to everyone, and it’s been great, but the first time was somehow special. First times are supposed to be special, aren’t they?
Everything is so nice and free and easy these days.
April 3
Eric still hasn’t called.
I am of two minds about this, she said deliberately. No, I really am. On the one hand I would just as soon he never called. He had his fun with me, she said grimly. And I with him, as far as that goes, and it did open me up, no question about it.
But.
But he scares the shit out of me, to be both crude and accurate about it. So on the one hand I would as soon stay with what I’ve got, that being David and Arnold and the sun in the morning and the moon at night.
On the other hand, if he called I would be glad of it, and I would go to him. Unquestionably.
April 6
How could I have thought that there was something so unmasculine (if there’s such a word, and if not, there is now) about a man having sex with another man? Maybe I would feel differently if Dave and Arnold acted like homosexuals.
Huh? What does it mean to act like a homosexual? Faggot is as faggot does, n’est-ce pas? Well, if they act effeminate, then. Campy. Like caricatures of women.
Dave and Arnold don’t.
Last night I sucked David while Arnold screwed him in the ass. And later I was tired, and off on a thought trip and very stoned, and I watched the two of them eat each other. Two good healthy studs with their cocks in each other’s mouths, gobbling greedily. And I got all involved in this great voyeurism trip, I really found myself getting all involved with watching, and they knew I was watching, and occasionally watched me watching them, and I played with myself, and I came that way.
You know what? Playing with oneself is very enjoyable. It really is. And it’s nicer still to do it right out in the open, not in one’s own room behind locked doors.
You can even turn masturbation into a togetherness thing. We talked about it and I said I would like to watch them do it sometime. Sometime in the future, because by then we were all sexed out for the night.
Arnold said that Philip Roth has opened the whole thing up. That jerking off is In this year. That everybody has always done it, but that they thought for years they were the only ones who did. Now everybody knows everybody does it. So they can start doing it with a clear conscience.
When you realize that we were still pretty high when he said this, you can imagine the depth it had. Logical wheels within wheels.
Out of sight, as we freaked-out hippy weirdos say. Hippie weirdos, that is. Hippy I’m not. I never entirely was, and I’ve lost twelve pounds in the past month.
Must be clean living.
April 10
It has been so long since I saw him that I answered the phone without even thinking that it might be him. He. Him. Who cares?
I’m rattled. It’s not a familiar sensation. I’ve been in such good shape lately and now I’m uptight again.
It was between two-thirty and three, and the phone rang, and I didn’t even think it might be Eric. I picked it up and said hello with bells in my voice.
“Jan? I want you this evening. Come at eight.”
“I—”
“Eight o’clock.”
“I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I have been out of town.”
“I see. Uh, I have a date, sort of.”
“I know.”
“How do you—”
“With the two queers.”
“They’re not exactly—”
“They are not expecting you tonight, Jan.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“I broke your date for you. To simplify things.”
“How could you do that.”
“I’ll expect you at eight.”
“Who are you?”
“Eight o’clock.”
End of conversation.
And I suppose if I don’t go two huge men dressed in black will come here and lead me to him in chains. And I suppose if I go right now and grab a plane for Timbuktu I’ll get off the plane and step into his arms.
I tried to reach David to break the date. No answer. Arnold would be working now, but I tried his phone to be sure. No answer.
He says he broke my date for me. How?
April 11
Of course I was there at eight.
Just now, sitting here in my own apartment a few hours after dawn, sitting here and trying to get the words flowing from the pen, it occurred to me how utterly changed I am once more after seeing him. I went back and read the entries describing the times with David and Arnold. I was, when I wrote those few pages, a girl I had never been before.
I am not that girl any longer.
I just now got up and went to look in the mirror. And a girl with my face looked back at me through frightened eyes. I had trouble forcing myself to look back.
Have I written yet that I understand the mirror superstition? Or have I had that thought while gazing into a mirror, not while scribbling in this book. Let us put it down in either case. It is simply that, if The People Who Run This Zoo hadn’t decided that breaking a mirror is seven years’ bad luck, everyone would break mirrors until there were none left. Hence they invented the superstition to keep the world from running out of mirrors.
I must have just had the thought and not written it out before. When you write it out you see what a dumb thought it is, and here I had felt myself rather clever.
I went there last night, appearing at his door on the dot of eight. He opened the door just as I was about to knock on it. He does that sort of thing all the time.
“Come in, Jan.”
I went in. He closed the door.
(No, damn it. I want to write about him in the present tense. Why?)
I walk in. He closes the door. When it shuts my mind fills with a vision, a thick nail-studded castle door being swung shut and bolted.
He turns to me. “Coffee?”
“All right.”
The coffee things are on the table in front of the large white couch. He pours, fills two small handleless cups. It is black, very strong and very sweet.
“You enjoyed yourself with the boys?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
“You told me I should see anyone I wanted.”
“You do not have to tell me what I told you.”