Roland Harding - Teen Queen

"But coming back to sex, that's why I draw the line at nothing. An orgasm's an orgasm, and I just cannot see any wrong or stigma in how that orgasm is brought on. A penis, a tongue, a finger – or any variations of these things – or even other thins, artificial things, mechanical things, if any of them can bring on an orgasm, it fits into my idea of sex."

They thought over this pronouncement.

Then Hector said: "Perhaps you're right, Claudine. That probably explains why I'm not as advanced along the road as you are. Why, there was a time today when I got scared. Lying there with Andrew frigging me half out of my mind. I couldn't help thinking: what happens when I come? I never have a second thought about what happens to the sperm when it's a woman, but Andrew? Ugh!"

"That's about the way I was feeling, too," confessed Andrew. "I've got probably further along the road to go than even you have, Hector, but right now I don't think I'll do that again."

"You people will learn," said Claudine. "For me, I doubt if there's a way of getting to orgasm that I haven't tried, or even that I wouldn't try. And I've loved it all. In my crowd, I promise you, anything goes. There are lesbians. There are pansies. And in between there are any amount of even queerer queers, and I've never regretted a brush with anyone of them! Sex, with me, is what you see when you roll away what's blocking your view of it. It's vast, so incomprehensively vast. I just pray I live long enough to know the whole gamut of it."

"That's what I pray, too," said Louise fervently. "The way we live, Hector and I, I've just been ripening for this sort of sexual revolt. Sometimes we're together, maybe for as long as a month. Then what happens? I get shot half across the world and when I'm free in any one place, then Hector is to hell and gone away from me. When we meet, we're lucky if we can manage a week together."

"And what good's that? Soon as I get the taste for it again, we're parted. But this time, and Christ knows what got into me," she cried, "unless maybe it was you, Andrew! No girl endures the magnitude of a penis like yours just once only, believe me. You gotta have it again and again. I got the taste for it. And suddenly, I knew just what was going to happen. I knew I was off on the sex jag of all time. There just wasn't going to be enough of it. So, thank all that's holy, you came into it too, Claudine. I don't think we'd have been anywhere without you to teach us. Where in God's name have you managed to hide this fantastic woman for so long, Hector?"

Hector smiled. Then the four sank into a long, easy silence.

Andrew broke it by saying: "So? Now it's started, can anybody tell me where we all go to from here?"

All were sobered by the thought. Hector, they knew, would have to leave in two days time for Greece. Louise had to remain on the Coast. Andrew, of course, would be tied up with his hotel duties.

"Hell, I'd forgotten you had so humble a thing as a day-by-day job," laughed Claudine. "Somehow you just don't look like a waiter."

"Not one, either," said Andrew. "Not forever, anyway. But here I might as well be. Anyway, when Hector goes, what then?"

"Yeah, what then?" asked Louise. She turned to her husband. "Would you be very angry, darling, if I had Andrew once in a while, while you're with Lambrakis?"

Hector choked down a sudden rise of resentment. Without the twitch of a single facial muscle to betray his thoughts, however, he said: "Not the slightest, Louise. You two go right ahead. Only on Louise's terms, remember. You don't go falling in love."

"Of course not," said Louise swiftly. "Oh, Hector, don't tell me you even had a suspicion that we'd do that – fall in love? Oh, darling, if you had even the tiniest doubt, I'd never! I'd wait for you forever!"

Claudine raised a quizzical eyebrow at this exchange. How far, she wondered, could Louise's theories work in actual practice? With a mocking smile, she watched Hector's reaction.

"Then you've got my permission," said Hector. "More. You've got my blessing, too."

Hector was thinking, suddenly, of a Turkish woman named Riva. Her last name did not come back to mind, but he saw in vision her body, like some glowing copper statue, stark naked and warm and feminine and loving, as it had been the last time they had met in a flat in Athens.

"You know, you're great people," said Andrew, with sincere admiration. "To think you just bulldoze me into this situation, then that we sit round here calmly talking ourselves into a thing that could explode like a load of dynamite, just as if we were discussing going to a movie or something."

"Nonsense. You're doing fine," said Claudine. "Anyway, do I fit into it anywhere? You got any use for me in it? I've an idea I'll be available, you know?"

"How could we leave you out?" cried Louise. "Of course we need you!"

"Glad to hear it. Glad to be able to be of some help," said Claudine. "And I'll help. For one thing, I'll watch your interests, Hector. If these two look like getting too serious, I'll cut it up. Leave it to me."

At that, the discussion ended. There were good nights. Then the cars left and in Claudine's villa, at long last, another winking light, visible from the vast, mysterious Mediterranean, went out.

One thing Louise had never found possible – the ability to choke back the feeling of anguish she invariably had whenever she had to say goodbye to Hector. All her married life it had been so if the world's airports, its docks or its railroad stations ever meant the happiness of reunion, they meant, much more, the misery of parting. Thus Louise thought as she drove back from Nice airport, tearful and utterly dejected, after having taken Hector to catch his Athens-bound plane.

At her hotel she flung herself upon her bed, yielding wholly to her misery, to the utter and sudden plunge into loneliness provoked by Hector's going. Why? she thought unhappily. Why? Why? Why. Why the rat race in which they seemed so bound up? Surely sometime, somewhere, she and Hector could stay put and put down roots.

And yet she knew, deep in her misery that this would be impossible. She loved her life. Travel was of the essence of her being. It was her life. New countries, new people, new languages spoken in completely-new environments. New types of feminine beauty always coming to her, relying on her for the power she could give these women to attract their men. The pale-skinned, the sun-tanned, the dark and exotic, the cold, aloof ones, the women of the tropics and the snow countries, of the Orient, Europe and America. All the women of the world to her were but as surface textures to an artist upon which to paint and to create. And Louise loved it.

The only thing that jarred, she thought, was the disorganization thrown into her life by the agonies of separation she seemed fated to endure each time she and Hector had to part.

It was bitter, and Louise was woman enough to drain out her broken heart in unrestrained crying. For long minutes she sobbed into her pillow until, to staunch her flow of grief, relief came in the guise of sleep.

Waking toward evening, she telephoned Claudine.

"I'm flat," she confessed miserably. "Have dinner with me?"

Claudine was understanding. She had intended a rehearsal for that evening. But, she thought, the hell with it. The cast can rehearse by themselves. "By all means," she offered. "Sorry to hear you're so low, honey. Andrew not around?"

"Andrew's not the easiest man in this hotel to be with," said Louise. "Has duties and things. Any case, I don't think it's Andrew I really need, not right now."

"Poor girl. But I understand."

Claudine was at the hotel within an hour. She had a way with people who've succumbed to the blues. Two martinis and a couple of succulent tournedos later, and Louise felt a new woman. Morale was up and the shock separation was over. "Now," said Claudine. "I hadn't meant this, but vast warehouse where the cast was practicing for the cast could get on without me, but I did want to be there tonight. Want to come? You can meet the bunch. They're crazy as knitting, but you may get a change out of them."