Sheldon Lord - Community of Women

Great God in heaven, she thought. Now there was a fresh approach — going to bed with somebody else’s husband not because you were hot to trot but because you were bored stiff. Getting boffed not for the sheer joy of the boffing but because it might be a change. God!

Well, she thought, just for the sake of argument, what would it be like?

In the first place, it would be hidden. It would be something to be carried on in secret, something done on the sly. How? At her home, during the day when Howard and the kids were gone? That would be tough, since Ted had to be in town just as Howard did. In motels? That would be something pretty outré, signing in under an alias in a sleazy motel and stealing a few minutes’ worth of lust in a smelly bed. Or maybe, by God, they could do it in the back seat of a car. That would take her back to the days of her youth, all right.

But Ted had a sports car, and it would be difficult. Bucket seats were fine for riding, but—

Well, they could take the Caddy. Plenty of room in the Caddy. Even more room in the station wagon; just toss a mattress on the floor in back and you’re ready for action. Then—

Oh, it was ridiculous. The whole thing was insane and she had to forget about it. Had to forget all about it. Had to think about other things like when to pick up Skip and Danny, and what to wear to the PTA meeting, and what to have for dinner, and, well—

Boring.

Boring.

Boring!

She was just about to go to the station wagon and drive down to school to pick up the boys when the phone rang. She hesitated a moment, then went to the phone and lifted the receiver to her ear.

“Hello?”

Silence greeted her. She said hello again, then listened to gentle laughter come over the line.

“Hello yourself,” Ted Carr said. “How’ve you been feeling, Nan-O?”

“What do you want?”

“You.”

Just the single word, the second-person-singular pronoun. Just that. It made her gasp.

“You’ve got your nerve,” she said finally. “You’ve really got a hell of a lot of nerve, calling me like this.”

“Busy, Nan-O?”

“Damn it—”

“I just thought you might have been doing a little thinking, Nan-O. About our discussion last night.”

“Ted—”

“Because I still think we might have a ball,” he went on. “You’ve got beautiful breasts, Nan-O. I’d like to touch them. Kiss them, play with them. I want to get in your pants, Nan-O.”

She hated him. And yet his words were reaching her, getting to her. She squirmed uncomfortably, passion beginning to mount up unwillingly in her system.

“Hot, Nan-O. All hot and ready to go?”

“Ted—”

“Let me draw you a picture,” he went on. “You’ll be lying on a bed. You’ll have your skirt way up over your waist and your panties down around your knees. And I’ll be working you up, getting you so hot you can’t stand it. You’ll beg for it, Nan-O. You’ll crawl to me on your dimpled knees. And then—”

“Stop it!”

A wicked laugh. “I’ll ring off now, Nan-O. But think it over. I’ll call again soon.”

He hung up before she could answer him. Think about it?

She shuddered.

She could think of nothing else.

Dave Whitcomb took Maggie out to dinner that night.

This was not unexpected. It was a Wednesday night, and Dave always took Maggie out to dinner on Wednesday, before heading over to the weekly poker game at Len Barnes’ house. They went, as always, to The Gables, an old Cheshire Point mansion which had been converted into an Early American style restaurant. They had a pair of extra-dry martinis to start, a pair of shrimp cocktails, a pair of chef’s salads with roquefort. Maggie ordered the roast beef while Dave had a blood-rare strip sirloin. Dave talked about how the shows had gone that morning, and Maggie mentioned her visit to Elly Carr.

The dinner was not exciting. Dave and Maggie did not have an especially exciting marriage, yet it was for each the most desirable solution to their own personal problems. The Whitcombs, man and wife, were united far less by love than by an affectionate tolerance. Each was a support for the other, a help for the other.

Maggie had lied to Elly Carr. Dave Whitcomb was not sterile. He and Maggie had never had any children not because Dave had spent too much time in front of an x-ray machine but because he and Maggie had never made love. They were in their seventh year of marriage, were very happy together, and could not conceivably regard divorce as even a remote possibility. Yet they slept in separate beds, and stayed in their respective beds, and never exchanged more than a public kiss.

There was a reason for this.

Dave was a homosexual, and Maggie was a lesbian.

To look at them, of course, you could never have guessed this cheerful little fact. Dave could hardly have looked less like the popularized concept of the homosexual. He wore his hair in a mud-brown crew-cut, didn’t swish when he walked, and wore standard latter-day Ivy League clothing, maybe a shade quieter than most of his Cheshire Point friends. He never minced, never lisped, and seemed on the surface to be one-hundred per cent heterosexual.

Like the majority of American homosexuals, Dave worked very hard to keep his sex life and his business and social life as far separated as possible. His poker friends were heterosexual, his business acquaintances were also heterosexuals; as a matter of full fact, he was a homosexual with absolutely no homosexual friends. Once or twice a week, when he wanted to meet a lover, he would go to any of several homosexual bars in New York, either in Greenwich Village or around the intersection of 72nd Street and Broadway. There he would meet someone, proceed to the other man’s apartment or to a hotel room, and have sexual relations. He was always careful never to permit his lover to learn his real name or address. He was an up-and-coming man in the television industry, a rising star in the production end; public knowledge of his sexual tastes could not possibly do him any good.

Sometimes, when he had little time to fence around or when his usual haunts failed to turn up a prospect, he would go to a male prostitute. He would meet any of a number of overgrown effeminate juvenile delinquents at a cafeteria on the north side of 42nd Street at Times Square, and for anywhere from five to thirty dollars he would enjoy the young man’s favors. He didn’t like to do this. It was sordid, for one thing; for another, he risked a beating or a robbery. But there were times when he had no choice.

On the surface, Dave Whitcomb’s life was eminently normal, eminently respectable. A happily married man with a beautiful wife and a good position in a dynamic industry.

If Dave did not fit the public image of the homosexual, Maggie in turn could not have less resembled the stereotyped lesbian. Her hair was long, not butch-cut. Her dress was feminine and in perfect taste. She used quite a bit of make-up. She looked, as one male country club member had remarked to another in a wistful voice, as though she might be a joyful nymphomaniac. Every pore of Maggie seemed to ooze sex. The sex, however, was directed solely at other women.

The Whitcombs finished dinner. Dave paid the check, left a large tip, and led the way to the Buick, which was parked in The Gables’ parking lot. He put a quarter into the attendant’s hand, opened the door for Maggie, closed it, walked around the car, opened his door, got behind the wheel, fitted the key into ignition, turned key, stepped on the gas pedal, and drove off.

“Well,” he said finally. “So you’re putting on the make for little Elly Carr.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t have to,” he said. “Not in so many words. Be careful as hell, Mag.”