Opal Andrews - The chamber of pleasures

Well, deare olde diary, here I am home early again from a date. This time it was with Larry, the Reverend Mister Collier's son, and I certainly had every reason to believe that his sweet kind gentle Lawrence would be different from other boys.

He isn't. We went to a movie, and he tried to hold my hand. I resisted, several times, and then when it seemed I had taught him that I am no easy girl who holds hands with just anybody at all, I let him. It was rather nice, although hands get a little hot and perspirey (I don't know if that's a word, but I refuse to say "sweaty"!) after a while. Anyhow, after a while my hand was not only hot and perspirey, my arm was tired and getting cramped, so I detached my fmgers from his and moved my hand to my lap.

He reached over there to hold it! With his fingertips touching me! I could feel them, right through my dress!

After that, understandably enough, I reached over with my other hand, firmly detached his from mine, and transferred it back to the arm of the seat.

He tried twice more during the movie, but I wouldn't have any of that.

Then, when the movie was over and we were getting into his father's car, he tried to kiss me.

"This is our first date, Larry," I told him. "I think you're moving just a little too fast, don't you? What would your father think, for Heaven's sake?"

He stared at me as if I were some kind of nut. I hate having to record the word he used, right here in my own diary, but I must if this diary of my Life is going to be honest. No, I won't! I can't! Weil, the word he used was the four-letter one, but what he meant when he said just two words was this:

"Screw Dad!"

(Understand that he did not say "screw", but the four-letter word meaning the same thing, and I will not record it here.)

I immediately went as stiff as a board, stared straight ahead, and ordered him to bring me home. He did, and without even apologizing. We did not say one word all the way home.

WHY ARE PEOPLE LIKE THIS?

(later)

It will be three months tomorrow that Daddy's been laid off. He hasn't been able to find anything else. Poor Daddy!

Poor us! I can tell Mother's very very worried, and money is just terribly tight. Oh yes, that reminds me. Although I agree with Mother that brassieres should be tight, I have definitely outgrown both the ones I have. (Oh if only God had blessed me with a diminutive bosom, like Mother's, rather than these… well. I suppose I am admirably suited to nurse babies, some day when I find a decent man…

Anyhow, I've had these bra's since my Freshman year in High School, and they're not only old and frayed and not too white any more, I have grown since then! They pinch. Mounds of soft white flesh bulge over the fabric. If only Mother would let me go to bed without wearing a bra!

Ah well, our Victoria says with a sigh, it's time for bed. My poor bosom feels so tight and painful, in this too-tight bra. Perhaps I'll be able to go to sleep on my back.

All my life I have been taught not to touch my body, or to allow it to be touched. I have not, and I have been very careful when bathing, especially not to touch my furry little Mound of Venus or my breasts, even though they always tingle and feel they want to be massaged once they're free of those awful bras. Only Ted has ever touched them, and I slapped him so hard that night my hand was red and tingly for hours. Just his touch made my bra feel even tighter, and I could tell the tip of my breast had gotten longer; it hurt, from being squeezed into the bra. But that night of all nights I did not touch myself or even dream of removing my bra before going to bed.

I record this tonight because I was whistled at today, just walking down the street. It made me feel all sorts of things; sort of warm and tingly, and angry, and rather nice, too. After all, someone thought I was pretty enough to whistle at!

I came home and couldn't seem to stop thinking about it, and I succumbed to the sin of vanity.

I came up here to my room and locked the door and kept looking at myself in the dresser mirror every time I passed. And I passed it a lot. I realized I was walking around on purpose, just so I could keep looking at myself. Admiring myself!

If mother knew that!

Or Rev Coffler!

But if they'd ever known what I did after that…!

Well, I bathed. And came out of the bathroom wearing my robe. I couldn't help looking at myself again, some more, sort of checking. Is that a pretty girl, I thought? Is that the sort of girl men whistle at?

Oh gosh, I thought, is this the sort of body that incites men's lusts? Was I created a harlot, a Jezebel, in the body of a… a temptress, despite the family I belong to and the upbringing and beliefs I have?

I stood there in front of the mirror staring at myself. Just staring and staring. Large blue eyes, quite blue, and I don't know if I like that or not. They're sort of like a baby's eyes, they're always so much bluer than when the child gets older.

A perfectly ordinary nose, neither a button nor a handsome British one like Deborah Kerr's, but not a hook or anything, either, thank Heaven. (Ah, vanity, vanity!) A nice mouth, I guess; who knows about mouths? A little wide, maybe, to be honest, and a little full of the lower lip. And all this blonde hair.

"You look just like Justine," Mr. Grayson told me one day after Lit class in my Junior year, just before I had the asthma trouble and cost Mother and Daddy so much money and had to miss two years of school. (It's embarrassing, about to enter High School this fall as an EIGHTEEN-year-old SENIOR, for Heaven's sake! Besides, I'd rather just have stayed out, and gotten a job. Mother and Daddy need the help I could give them by bringing in some money. But Daddy and his pride! He wouldn't hear of it. HE didn't finish High School, he said, and look at him. Dinky house old car and now he's laid off and we're really hurting. I sigh.)

Anyhow, Mr. Grayson told me I looked just like Justine. "Justine?" I echoed, frowning. "Justine who?"

He laughed, making me feel sort of small. "There," he said, "that's just it. That little frown, the big wide blue eyes, so innocent, and that pursed mouth, so sensuous. That's your Justine look!"

"But who's Justine?"

He shook his head. "I shouldn't have mentioned it. She's the, ah, protagonist in a very wicked book. Its title is Justine. Actually I don't know if she was ever described or not. I don't remember. But all the way through I saw her as a soft pale blond with big blue eyes and a mouth like yours, wide, but with a full lower lip. Very sensuous. The perfect…"

"Sir?"

He shook his head again. "I'm sorry," he said.

"The perfect what, Mr. Grayson?" Maybe I was flirting a little. Shameful me! But I was also fascinated, of course. I have had this terrible curiosity ever since I was a child. Everyone tells me it's going to get me into trouble some day. Humpf. Well, it hasn't!

"The perfect… victim," he said, in a low voice, and he looked at me so intensely I was paralyzed, like a mouse or a rabbit staring at a cobra.

Well, the bell rang, and that was that. And after that I was very careful not to be anywhere alone with Mr. Grayson!

Eventually, of course, very carefully and sneakily, I found out who had written a "very wicked book" called Justine.

I was shocked. I am still shocked.

Justine was a book written by… The Marquis de Sade! Everyone knows what a monster HE was! And I look like… oh, that's terrible!

I wander here in my diary, don't I? I must try to stop that, curb it. A wandering mind is an idle one, and one should have a fixed purpose in all things. I've heard that often enough, from more mouths than one. Even…