Grant Roberts: The reluctant couple

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…