CHAPTER 9
Paula closed her eyes and tried to tell herself it was just another dream, that soon she would awaken afflicted with prickly heat, with a strained empty feeling in her belly, and with a dampness in her crotch. She opened her eyes and he was still there. His cock was still there. She could feel the hot hardness of his stringily muscled thighs pushing at the sensitive lower sides of her full-firm tits, forcing them upward until she looked like some totally besiliconed go-go girl.
But most of all she could feel the hot maleness radiating from the tip of his tool, so close now she could practically taste it. Unless she got on the ball and did something to break free and blow the whistle on this breaker and enterer, she was going to taste it very soon. And it was not going to be at all like the first time she had tasted it.
"If you'd like to step into the other room," Mr. Costello explained, "I can show you some historical references to the Oneida Community." Without waiting for an answer, he got up, which automatically removed his hand from somewhere above her knee. Paula gave a tiny sigh of relief. She wasn't a bit worried about nice old Mr. Costello but she had been very afraid that if he didn't get his hand off her thigh she might betray her totally improper thoughts with a nervous giggle. Silently, she followed the old man into the back office, which was equipped with a day bed, a single easy chair, a wall full of books, and a well-stocked refrigerator. "Umm yes, up there if you please."
Obediently, Paula climbed another rickety ladder steadied by her gallant employer and pulled a book from the top shelf. She sat beside Mr. Costello on the only seat where they could look at a book together, which happened to be the day bed.
She had been entertaining fond hopes of being initiated into a forbidden, grown-up world of racy postcards or any of the million interesting and secret things she was always being told she was too young to worry about. Instead, to her disappointment, Mr. Costello had shown her some blurry woodcuts of a bunch of farm buildings and a lot of nineteenth-century people dressed in nineteenth-century clothes from ankle to chin. She began to wonder if she could go home early that night. There didn't seem to be much work in the office.
"But what was so different about them?" she finally asked.
"No marriage," Mr. Costello explained.
Paula knew lots of unmarried people. So what?
"They found a different, possibly better way to solve mankind's basic needs."
She began to wonder if Mr. Costello was by any chance talking about a need that had been troubling Paula ever since before she had been old enough to demand a bra. With a tiny thrill of excitement, she managed a timid, "How did they do that?"
Mr. Costello gave her a faint smile. "As you've no doubt observed by this time, people in our society tend to pair off-formally or informally. Either way makes for monotony."
Paula sensed that she was approaching the brink of something important. She waited for Mr. Costello to continue.
"Not wishing to over populate and not having the benefit of this century's contraceptive devices, the Oneida Community managed to kill two birds with one stone: they lowered the birth rate while raising the communal libido."
Paula wasn't quite sure what he meant. Did libido really mean what she thought? Was he talking about-about screwing?
"Young men, as you've no doubt observed, are so high-strung and demanding that just about anything will suit them. This coincides rather neatly with an older woman's delight in being called on to teach and train all that eager young flesh at a time in life when she's no longer too concerned with an inconvenient pregnancy."
Paula tried not to gasp. He was talking about screwing, no matter how elegant his language or high-falutin' his choice of words.
"This imbalance in the community naturally left only the older men to pair off with the younger girls, a happy circumstance if one stops to consider all the ramifications thereof."
"Like what?" Paula demanded.
"Boys, due to their inexperience and being in the glandular prime of their young lives, tend to have a certain affinity with rabbits."
For once Paula knew exactly what he was talking about. She had visited her grandparents often enough and had observed rabbits in the process of making more rabbits. For the first time she had understood another girl's scathing, "He's a rabbit!" when discussing a football player of their acquaintance. She began to have a faint inkling.
"Young love inspires a great deal of bad poetry," Mr. Costello said wryly. "But love, like any other human endeavor, does not come naturally. The Oneida Community let the older women offer the benefit of their years of experience to boys just coming of age. These boys in later years paid their dues by performing the same service for the next generation of young ladies." Mr. Costello paused a moment and added, "Odd, you may think, but eminently practical."
Paula didn't know what to think. She had often wondered what it might be like to live in a society, in a culture, that permitted her free rein, allowed her to experiment and gratify the itch between her thighs without labeling her loose. But even more, she wondered how Mr. Costello's hand had managed once more to get between her thighs without her even noticing. Hastily, she clapped her thighs together but he did not remove his hand-not even when she crossed her legs.
So now what was she going to do? Paula abruptly realized two things: Mr. Costello might seem harmless, seem nice, but nevertheless, he did have his hand between her smooth, tapering thighs, had it well up the road toward that ineffable spot where two teen-age thighs meld into one firm, gently rounded, compact little ass. The second thing she learned was that she liked the feel of Mr. Costello's hand there.
She liked it there well enough to leave it there, to sit there on the day bed beside him with a book on their knees that described exotic sexual practices. She was curious about the practical results of the Oneida Community's sexual revolution. She was even more curious about what Mr. Costello intended to do with the hand he had now lost to the grip of her tight-clasped thighs.
His white hair was unruffled, not a hair of his splendid mustache out of place. His florid complexion was just a teeny bit more rosy than usual but, apart from that, Mr. Costello seemed unchanged. Paula caught herself thinking wild thoughts. He was talking freely about sexual revolution. What would his reaction be if she were to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him?
Golly! What was wrong with her? She had kissed a couple of boys and hadn't been all that turned-on by the grabbing, hand slapping wrestling match that had followed. So why was she so excited at the thought of this nice old man putting his calm unhurried hands on her budding young body?
Of course she wasn't really going to do anything-much less did she contemplate going all the way. That was why it was so nice to sit around with an old man who wouldn't engage in the hand slapping wrestling match, who would not press her to go farther than she intended. It was so nice, so safe to sit here with Mr. Costello's hand between her legs and think all kinds of interesting thoughts and know nothing bad was going to come of it
"But what happened to the Oneida Community?" she asked, not because she wanted to know but because it was awkward just sitting here with Mr. Costello's hand trapped between her tight-clasped thighs and neither of them saying anything.
"It never actually ceased to exist," he said, ignoring his hand. "But times changed and the very nature of such an experiment means there will be no children to carry on. As times and sexual mores changed people everywhere started swinging just a little more and they just didn't get as many recruits."