Эптон Синклер - Oil!

He listened while she told him about bandits who were making a business of holding up couples parked by the road-side; some were beastly to the girls, and what would Bunny do if one of them were suddenly to appear? Bunny said he didn’t know, but of course he’d defend a woman the best he could. “But I don’t want you to get shot,” said Eunice. “We’ve a scandal already in our family.” So she said, “Let’s get lost, Bunny;” and he gathered up the rug and they wandered over the dunes—a long way from the road and from everything; and in one of the hollows, a still nest where the sand was soft and smooth, she told him to spread the rug again, and there they sat, hid from everything save the round yellow moon, which has looked down upon millions and millions of such scenes, and never yet betrayed a confidence.

They sat close together, and Eunice rested her head against Bunny’s shoulder and whispered, “Do you care for me a little bit?” He assured her that he did, but she said, no, he must think she was a horrid bold thing; and when he declared that he didn’t, she said, “Then why don’t you kiss me?” He began to kiss her, but she wasn’t satisfied—he didn’t mean it, she said; and suddenly she whispered, “Bunny, I don’t believe you’ve ever really loved a girl before!”

He admitted that he had not. “I’ve always known you were a queer boy,” she said. “What is the matter?” Bunny said he didn’t quite know; he was trembling violently, because he had never had anything like this happen to him, and several different emotions clamored at the same time, and which one should he follow? “Let me teach you, Bunny,” whispered the girl; and when he did not answer at once, she put her lips upon his, in a long kiss that made him dizzy. He murmured faintly that something might happen, she might get into trouble; but she told him not to worry about that, she knew about those things and taken the needed precautions.

Such was the way of Bunny’s initiation into the adult life. Gone were the days of happy innocence when he could be content to sit holding hands with Rosie Taintor. “Holding hands” was now walking on a slippery ledge, over a dark abyss where pleasure and pain were so mingled you could hardly tell them apart. Bunny was frightened by the storm of emotion which seized upon him, and still more by the behavior of the girl in his arms; a kind of frenzy shook her, she clung to him in a convulsion of excitement, half sobbing, half laughing, with little cries as of an animal in pain. And Bunny must share this delirium, she would not have it otherwise, she was furious in her exactions, the mistress of these dark rites, and he must obey her will. The first time, the boy was overwhelmed by the realization of what he had done, but she clung to him, whispering, “Oh, Bunny, don’t be ashamed! No, no! I won’t let you be ashamed! Why haven’t we got a right to be happy? Oh, please, please, be happy!” So he had to promise, and do his best.

“Oh, Bunny, you are such a sweet lover! And we are going to have such good times.” This was her crooning song, wrapped in his arms, there under the spring-time moon, which is the same in California as everywhere else in the world. And when the chill of the California night began to creep into their bones, they could hardly tear themselves apart, but all the way over the dunes they walked arm in arm, kissing as they went. “Oh, Bunny, it was bold and bad of me, but tell me you forgive me, tell me you’re glad I did it!” It appeared to be his duty to comfort her.

Driving back to Beach City they talked about this adventure. Bunny hadn’t thought much about sex, he had no philosophy ready at hand, but Eunice had hers, and told it to him simply and frankly. The old people taught you a lot of rubbish about it, and then they sneaked off and lived differently, and why should you let yourself be fooled by silly “don’ts”? Love was all right if you were decent about it, and when you had found out that you didn’t have to have any babies, why must you bother to get married? Most married people were miserable anyhow, and if the young people could find a way to be happy, it was up to them, and what the old folks didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

Did Bunny see anything wrong with that? Bunny answered that he didn’t; the reason he had been “such an old prude,” was just that he hadn’t got to know Eunice. She said that men were supposed not to care for a girl who made advances to them; therefore, she added with her flash of mischief, it would be up to Bunny to make some of the advances from now on. He said he would do so, and would have started at once, only Eunice was driving at forty-some miles an hour, and it would be better to hurt her feelings than to upset the car.

Were there other girls like Eunice, Bunny wanted to know, and she said there were plenty, and named a few, and Bunny was surprised and a little shocked, because some of them were prominent in class affairs, and decorous-seeming. Eunice told him about their ways, and it was a good deal like a secret society, without any officers or formal ritual, but with a strict code none the less. They called themselves “the Zulus,” these bold spirits who had dared to do as they pleased; they kept one another’s secrets faithfully, and helped the younger ones to that knowledge which was so essential to happiness. The old guarded this knowledge jealously—how to keep from having babies, and what to do if you got “caught.” There was a secret lore about the art of love, and books that you bought in certain stores, or found stowed away behind other books in your father’s den. Such volumes would be passed about and read by scores.

It was a new ethical code that these young people were making for themselves, without any help from their parents. Eunice did not know, of course, that she was doing anything so imposing as that; she just talked about her feelings, and what she liked and what she feared. Was it right to love this way or that? And what did Bunny think about the possibility of loving two girls at the same time? Claire Reynolds said you couldn’t, but Billy Rosen said you could, and they were wrangling all the time. But Mary Blake got along quite happily with two boys who loved her and had agreed not to be jealous.—This was a new world into which Bunny was being introduced, and he asked a lot of questions, and could not help blushing at some of Eunice’s matter-of-fact replies.

Bunny crept into the house at two o’clock in the morning, and no member of the family was the wiser. But he was equally as late the next night, and the next—had he not promised Eunice to “make the advances”? So of course the family realized that something was up, and it was interesting to see their reactions. Aunt Emma and Grandma were in a terrible “state,” but they could not say why—such was the handicap the old generation imposed upon themselves. They both went to Dad, but could only talk about late hours and their effect on a boy’s health. And Dad himself could not do much more. When Bunny said that he had been taking Eunice Hoyt driving, Dad asked about her, was she a “nice” girl? Bunny answered that she was the treasurer of the girls’ basket-ball team, and her father was Mr. Hoyt, whom Dad knew, and she had her own car and had even tried to pay for the supper. So there could be no idea that Bunny was being “vamped,” and all Dad said was, “Take it easy, son, don’t try to live your whole life in a couple of weeks.”

Also there was Bunny’s sister, and that was curious. Had some underground message come to Bertie, through connections with the “Zulus”? All that she said was, “I’m glad you’ve consented to take an interest in something beside oil and strikers for a change.” But behind that sentence lay such an ocean of calm feminine knowledge! Bunny was started upon a new train of thought. Could it be that late hours meant the same thing for his sister that they had suddenly come to mean for him? Bertie was supposed to be dancing; and did she always come directly home, or did she also park by the waysides? Bunny had got over being shocked by the parking of Eunice’s car, but it took him longer to get used to the idea of the parking of his sister’s car. He began to notice, as he drove along the highways in the evening—what a great number of parked cars there were!