T. Boyle - The Inner Circle

That wasn’t the case here. I didn’t really discuss it with my colleagues, but for my part the sense of standing outside of the action only heightened my response, which was, to say the least, unprofessional. I was aroused, and no doubt about it. The woman — the female — was slim and dark, with perfectly symmetrical breasts, and she wore her hair the way Iris did, the brushed-out curls balling at her throat and shoulder blades as she went through her repertoire; the male was of medium build, his penis uncircumcised and about average in length and breadth (all those penny postcards came to mind, all those measurements duly recorded and addressed to Professor Alfred C. Kinsey, Zoology Department, University of Indiana) and there was something winning in his face, a sense of naïveté or insouciance, as if he weren’t performing a role at all, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have sex with your wife while a third party ran film through a camera. Both of them were attractive. Very attractive. And I’m sorry, because that shouldn’t make an iota of difference to a scientist concerned with individual variation, the homely, overweight and poorly favored every bit as significant as the Venuses and Adonises, but it did. My mouth was dry. My palms were sweating. And the rest — well, the rest of the physiological response should be obvious.

Immediately, as the film began, the couple were naked, no foreplay or teasing as in the peep shows, the female seated atop the male on a couch, both of them facing the camera. His phallus was visible between her thighs, and she was manipulating it in her fingers and at the same time turning back over her shoulder to lap at his tongue. The scene held a moment, and then they shifted position, she going down to fellate him before he entered her and they went through the usual motions until finally rolling over so that she was atop him, her face to the camera, absolutely rapt, the eyes open and glaring, the mouth slack — almost grimacing — even as the shudder of orgasm ran through her.

“There,” Prok cried. “See there? That is the expression of female orgasm, precisely, and it cannot be faked. The wife who smiles during coitus or the prostitute with her crying out and all the rest of her theatrics, should see this — every woman should see it.”

We sat in silence, listening to the ratcheting of the film, contemplating the proposition.

“Really,” Prok said, even as a second scene presented itself — they were in the kitchen now, she on the counter at waist-level, her legs spread, he visible only as a pair of tensed white buttocks until the camera shifted to show his erection—“this is first-rate work. Should we give them a special citation as friends of the research? What do you think, gentlemen?” Prok was making a joke, or coming as close to it as he was constitutionally able.

“But seriously,” he added after a moment, “perhaps we should look them up next time we’re in — where was it, Florida?” He glanced round at us, the flicker of the film playing off his face. “I can’t help thinking how this might be improved with a little direct lighting, that is, and perhaps a more adept cameraman — or — woman.”

Things moved swiftly after that. Prok was already campaigning for more space — new quarters, as befitted our success, with soundproofed interview rooms, individual offices, clerical space, a separate library to house the erotica collection — and the need for a photographic laboratory only added fuel to his argument. Ever since he’d joined the staff, Rutledge, an amateur photographer, had been taking photos of erotic drawings and art objects on loan to us from their owners around the world, and Prok had set up a primitive darkroom in the basement of the house on First Street to assist him here, but now we all saw how inadequate that was. Prok went into high gear. Royalties from the male volume were pouring into the Institute, and he resolved to acquire the finest photographic and cinematic equipment available and to take on a full-time staff photographer as well. That photographer — Ted Aspinall — would become the final member of the inner circle, privy to our deepest secrets and a participant in all that was to come.

Aspinall was in his early thirties at the time, private, unmarried, rating perhaps a 3 on the 0–6 scale, and he was earning his living as a commercial photographer in Manhattan. Physically, he was somewhat imposing, six feet tall and blocky, with big squared-off hands and a massive bone structure, and yet his manner was anything but — he had the reticent, knowing air of the Greenwich Village hipster, he wore dark glasses even at night and never removed his tan trench coat except, presumably, to go to bed. When the male volume came out, he read it through twice, then telephoned Prok out of the blue to tell him how much it had affected him, and the two of them immediately hit it off. We met him when we were in New York, and then he took up Prok on his invitation to visit the Institute and things progressed from there.

His first assignment for us was the aforementioned study of the means of sperm emission in the human male, because this was essential to our understanding of conception in the female. The medical literature of the time maintained that it was necessary for sperm to spurt out under pressure in order for fertilization to occur, but our data showed that the majority of males did not spurt but rather dribbled. And so Prok determined on a trial. We went to New York that fall (of 1948, that is, and I recall the date because the trip caused me to miss John Jr.’s first Halloween celebration — Iris dressed him as Tigger from the Winnie the Pooh books, in a costume she’d sewed herself from a pattern, and she was furious with me) and booked rooms, as usual, at the Astor. Aspinall showed up with his business partner, a man around my age whose name escapes me now — let’s call him “Roy,” for convenience’s sake — and Roy, who had extensive H-contacts, assured us he could get us the one thousand volunteers Prok had decided on for a definitive sample.

Prok was skeptical at first. “One thousand?” he repeated. “Are you sure? Quite sure? Because anything less would be a waste of our time.” We were in our room on the fifteenth floor, looking out over the crush of humanity in the square below. The curtains were open wide — Prok favored light — and the furnishings were what you’d expect from a hotel in the low- to mid-priced range.

Roy — struck wire, amphetamine-fueled, a little man waving his arms — let his voice ride up the register. “No, no, no,” he said, “you don’t understand. I know this boy, he’s a genius. He’s beautiful. Seventeen years old, perfect skin, hair like Karo syrup, he’s a German refugee, or Austrian maybe, with just a trace of that accent to spice things up, if you know what I mean. Right now he’s the hottest thing on the street, at least in this neighborhood. It’s two dollars for each volunteer, right? And two dollars for the kid for every one he brings in?”

Prok, frowning, showed him his wallet.

“Okay,” Roy said, “okay,” and Aspinall gave us a nod of assurance. “Tomorrow night, five p.m., at our studio, right?”

The following night, Prok, Corcoran and I turned the corner onto the block where Aspinall and his partner ran their photographic business out of the ground floor of a brownstone, and my first thought was that there had been an accident, a fire, people evacuating the building and the hook and ladder on the way. It took me a moment to realize that the line of people stretching the entire block — the line of men, exclusively men — wasn’t leaving the building, but entering it. A number of them recognized Prok as we ducked through the crowd, calling out his name, pressing in for autographs, but Prok gave them his dispassionate face and reminded them that they were participants in a scientific experiment, not a radio quiz program. A hundred hands shot out to touch him notwithstanding, and he shook as many as he could, his grin fixed like a politician’s, as we climbed the stairs and strode through the open door of the studio.