John Barth - Where Three Roads Meet

That-all said, however, Will himself readily acknowledged to his Fred-friends that as of his matriculation at VVLU, his innocence, of which he was more than ready to be divested, was of an extent whereof he'd been innocently ignorant, excuse all those of s: It included not merely the difference between, e.g., Cabernet and Beaujolais, Hapsburg and Hohenzollern, Windsor and four-in-hand, but also — unusual though by no means rare for late-teen small-town middle-class WASP males in those days, unless they were in the military — the ins and outs, so to speak, of intercourse, in both senses, with the opposite sex. Except for Donnie McDougal's older sister Karen — who'd walked bare-ass naked one moonlit July night through her brother's bedroom en route to the house's single toilet while wide-awake Will was sleeping over, and then en route back, as if suspecting that the boys might be only feigning sleep, had paused at their bed-foot and given her plump backside a mischievous twitch or two in their direction before returning to her own bedroom and closing the door — he had never seen a woman in the altogether.

"Whereas Freds One and Two, on the other hand, dot dot dot…"

Had been so intimately familiar through so many years and developmental stages that by the time they reached their twenties and commenced their unofficial cohabitation in Briarwood 304, while not at all bored with each other, they found it erotically interesting, shall we say, to admit the so-innocent Fred Three, gradually, into their intimacy.

"Erotically interesting, yes: We shall say that. Part of his tutelage in Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, though more to do with life's facts than with its capital-T Truths."

Thus did it amuse and perhaps mildly titillate Will's teacher-pal to emerge grinning one January late afternoon from 304's bathroom (whereto he'd excused himself to take a leak while the threesome were playing hearts) brandishing Winnie's douche syringe, with its large red rubber squeeze-bulb and its penis-length curved black plastic nozzle, and to declare, "Pop-quiz time, Wilfredo: What is this instrument, and to what end, so to speak, is it applied?" And then — when the best his protégé could come up with (pretty sure he was mistaken) was "Enema?" — merrily demanded of eye-rolling Winifred that she enlighten their benighted combo-colleague, "with or without demonstration, as your pedagogical sense inclines." And enlighten him she did, plucky girl: In the I'll-show- you spirit of mock-indignant retaliation that she and Al not infrequently assumed for their own entertainment, she plunked down her cards, snatched the item from him, bade him sit and not dare peek while she led their much-discomfited tutee into the bathroom, closed the door halfway, and in a voice pitched to carry through the apartment, said, "So let's pretend that that charming chap and I have just fucked, okay? And even though his charming little pecker may be less formidable than this charming dildo here, it will have managed to unload a charming troop of little Al Baumanns into you-know-where. Or maybe you don't know where, right? So let me just step out of these step-ins and show you. Now, then: Our objective being for him and me to have our premarital fun without knocking up poor Winnie before we're official, either our bass player uses a rubber — but what fun is that? — or else our post-coital pianist fills this bulb with a spermicidal douche (from the French for 'shower,' mind, not the French for 'sweet,' and plain water will do for this demo). Lacking a proper bidet Français— did you know that un bidet means an old nag or a trestle as well as a certain hygienic fixture? — she then bestrideth this Yankee toilet like so, opens her pearly white thighs like so, and — watch closely, now, enfant … In fact, you can do this part yourself: Be my guest, and gently, please, in and out, au point d'orgasm. Entendu? "

Et cetera, not actually removing her underpants and sitting, much less permitting her awed attendant to insert the nozzle, but giving Al every reason, so it seemed to Will, to imagine otherwise. Grinning broadly, "So, dites-moi, " that friend demanded of him when wondering student and triumphant teacher-demonstrator returned to the living room, "d'j'ever see such a pettable puss? But don't forget" — holding up a warning forefinger—"I'm the only one who really gets to see it, not to mention— hey! " For here the faux-indignant Winnie picked up her wineglass from the card table and dumped several ounces of Sauvignon Blanc onto her lover's head. Laughing with him then while still standing between the seated males, "I'll show you, Mister Wiseass!" she said, and yanked her panties down to her knees, then lifted her skirt front with one hand, seized hapless Will by the pompadour with the other, and in fact showed him, nose to bush, the dainty precinct under discussion. "Truth, Goodness, and Beauty: voilà! "

"All in one piece," wowed Wilfred managed to marvel, and for that double-entendre bon mot got his face pressed briefly but squarely into it. Lesson done then, Win pulled up her underpants, and the laughing trio resumed their card game. Reraising his forefinger, "Fifty years down the road," Al predicted — not altogether in jest, so it seemed to Will—"some academic hack like me will do a doctoral dissertation called Briarwood 304: The Moral/Aesthetic/Erotic Initiation of Wilfred Chase. "

" Or, " added Winnie, sorting her cards, "The Post-Joycean Novelist as Quasi-Mythic Wandering Hero. Dissertation subtitles have to have an as. "

"You're no academic hack," loyally protested Will. "And I'm no Post-Joycean Quasi-Mythic Wandering Whatever."

"Not yet, for damn sure," his mentor agreed, then resumed his mock-solemn air: "But mark my words, comrades: Half a century down the road, this three-way-hearts-game afternoon when Stark first rubbed Chase's nose in Truth Goodness and Beauty will be seen to have been a literary-historical turning point. The Ur-Mythic Summons to Adventure! The fucking Call! "

Offered somewhat flustered though deeply flattered Will, "Another archetypal Y? The Stark Pudendum as Nowise-Trivial Trivium? But I forgot to notice whether it's equiangular."

"I'll let you know in the morning," Al promised. "Unless Win wants to continue your French lesson now?"

"Kiss my sweet as ," growled she, "the pair of you. And let's play, okay?"

Play they did (after Al informed them that the above-alluded-to Irish Modernist émigré writer, responding to a critic's charge that the language-play of Finnegans Wake was "ultimately trivial," had declared, "I'm not trivial; I'm quadrivial "): played through that academic year, and not only at their card games, their verbal badinage, and their jazz sessions at the Trivium (where, they agreed, long musical comradeship had given them a nonverbal, nondiscursive, but subtle and eloquent medium of three-way communication rich in cues, signals, teasing or serious queries and responses, improvised joint statements, and trial-and-error experiments), but with Truth, Goodness, and Beauty as well.

Know thyself …At this point in his story, what Will Chase understood of himself included that he was physically okay: tall, lean, healthy, free of disfigurement, and, though not particularly handsome, not physiognomically ill-favored either. Historically fortunate, too, having been born to comfortably middle-class American parents in just the right historical "window" to miss both world wars (not here for the first, too young to serve in the second) and to be scarcely aware of the Great Depression of the 1930s, which his parents had gamely scrimped through in their son's grade school years. That although no whiz kid like Al and Winnie, he was reasonably intelligent. Not well educated by their enviable standard, but learning fast and eagerly. Not remarkably brave, he supposed (never having been put to serious test in that department), but no coward either, he'd bet. No longer a believer in God (he had shrugged off in high school his parents' perfunctory Protestantism), but withal a morally inclined and ethically decent fellow by his own estimation despite some questionable, mainly experimental lapses, to be reviewed shortly. And finally, that in place of the professional-caliber musical talent that he had erst so craved but was reconciled to lacking, he had been endowed with (or was anyhow resolved to acquire and develop) a Way with Words.