John Irving - In One Person

“Lear’s shadow,” I said. “I didn’t want a part in the play, anyway,” I told her.

“Well, at least you didn’t say Lear’s shad roe,” Miss Frost said.

“Lear’s shadow,” I repeated.

“And what’s this that I’ve got in my hand?” she asked me.

“My penith, ” I answered.

“I wouldn’t change that penith for all the world, William,” Miss Frost said. “I believe you should say that word any fucking way you want to.”

What happened next would usher in the unattainable; what Miss Frost did to me would prove inimitable. She pulled me suddenly to her—I was flat on my back—and she kissed me on my mouth. She was wearing a bra—not a padded one, like Elaine’s, but a see-through bra with only slightly bigger cups than I’d expected. The material was sheer, and much silkier than the soft cotton of Elaine’s bra, and—to compare it to the more utilitarian undergarments in my mother’s mail-order catalogs—Miss Frost’s bra was not in the training-bra category; it was altogether sexier and more sophisticated. Miss Frost also wore a half-slip, of the slinky kind women wear under a skirt—this one was a beige color—and when she straddled my hips and sat on me, she appeared to hike up the half-slip, well above mid-thigh. Her weight, and how firmly she held me, pressed me into the bed.

I held one of her small, soft breasts in one hand; with my other hand, I tried to touch her, under her half-slip, but Miss Frost said, “No, William. Please don’t touch me there.” She took my straying hand and clasped it to her other breast.

It was my penis that she guided under her half-slip. I had never penetrated anyone, and when I felt this most amazing friction, of course this felt like penetration to me. There was a slippery sensation—there was absolutely no pain, yet my penis had never been so tightly gripped—and when I ejaculated, I cried out against her small, soft breasts. I was surprised that my face was pressed against her breasts and her silky bra, because I didn’t remember the moment when Miss Frost had stopped kissing me. (She’d said, “No, William. Please don’t touch me there.” Obviously, she couldn’t have been kissing me and speaking to me at the same time.)

There was so much I wanted to say to her, and ask her, but Miss Frost was not in a mood for conversation. Perhaps she was feeling the curious constraints of “so little time” again, or so I managed to convince myself.

She drew a bath for me; I was hoping that she would take off the rest of her clothes and get into the big tub with me, but she did not. She knelt beside that bathtub with the lion paws for feet, and the lion heads for faucets, and she gently bathed me—she was especially gentle with my penis. (She even spoke of it affectionately, using the penith word in a way that made us both laugh.)

But Miss Frost kept looking at her watch. “Late for check-in means a restriction, William. A restriction might entail an earlier check-in time. No visits to the First Sister Public Library after closing time—we wouldn’t like that, would we?”

When I had a look at her watch, I saw it was not even nine-thirty. I was just a few minutes’ walk from Bancroft Hall, which I pointed out to Miss Frost.

“Well, you might run into Kittredge and have a German discussion—you never know, William,” was all she said.

I had noticed a wet, silky feeling, and when I touched my penis—before stepping into the bath—my fingers had a vaguely perfumy smell. Maybe Miss Frost had used a lubricant of some kind, I imagined—something I would be reminded of years later, when I first smelled those liquid soaps that are made from almond or avocado oil. But, whatever it was, the bath had washed it away.

“No detours to that old yearbook room—not tonight, William,” Miss Frost was saying; she helped me get dressed, as if I were a child going off to my first day of school. She even put a dab of toothpaste on her finger, and stuck it in my mouth. “Go rinse your mouth in the sink,” she told me. “I assume you can find your way out—I’ll lock up again, when I go.” She kissed me then—a long, lingering kiss that caused me to put both my hands on her hips.

Miss Frost quickly intercepted my hands, taking them from her slinky, knee-length half-slip and clasping them to her breasts, where (I had the distinct impression) she believed my hands belonged. Or perhaps she believed that my hands didn’t belong below her waist—that I should not, or must not, touch her “there.”

As I made my way up the dark basement stairs, toward the faint light that was glowing from the foyer of the library, I was remembering an idiot admonition in a long-ago morning meeting—the always-numbing warning from Dr. Harlow, on the occasion of a weekend dance we were having with a visiting all-girls’ school. “Don’t touch your dates below their waists,” our peerless school physician said, “and you and your dates will be happier!”

But this couldn’t be true, I was thinking, when Miss Frost called to me—I was still on the stairs. “Go straight home, William—and come see me soon!”

We have so little time! I almost called back to her—one of those premonitory thoughts I would remember later, and forever, though at the time I imagined I was thinking of saying it just to see what she would say. Miss Frost was the one who seemed to think we had so little time, for whatever reason.

Outside, I had a passing thought about poor Atkins—poor Tom . I was sorry that I’d been mean to him, though it made me laugh at myself to recall I had ever imagined he might have a crush on Miss Frost. It was funny to think of them being together—Atkins with his pronunciation problem, his complete incapability of saying the time word, and Miss Frost saying it every other minute!

I had passed the mirror in the dimly lit foyer, scarcely looking at myself, but—in the star-bright September night—I considered that I had looked much more grown up to myself (than before my encounter with Miss Frost, I mean). Yet, as I made my way along River Street to the Favorite River campus, I reflected that I could not tell from my expression in the mirror that I’d just had sex for the first time.

And that thought had an unnerving, disturbing companion—namely, I suddenly imagined that maybe I hadn’t had sex. (Not actual sex—no actual penetration, I mean.) Then I thought: How can I be thinking such a thing on what is the most pleasurable night of my young life?

I as yet had no idea that it was possible not to have actual sex ( or actual penetration) and still have unsurpassable sexual pleasure—a pleasure that, to this day, has been unmatched.

But what did I know? I was only eighteen; that night, with James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room in my book bag, my crushes on the wrong people were just beginning.

THE COMMON ROOM IN Bancroft Hall was, like the common rooms in other dorms, called the butt room; the seniors who were smokers were allowed to spend their study hours there. Many nonsmokers who were seniors thought it was a privilege too important to be missed; even they chose to spend their study hours there.

No one warned us of the dangers of secondhand smoke in those fearless years—least of all our imbecilic school physician. I don’t recall a single morning meeting that addressed the affliction of smoking! Dr. Harlow had devoted his time and talents to the treatment of excessive crying in boys—in the doctor’s stalwart belief that there was a cure for homosexual tendencies in the young men we were becoming.

I was fifteen minutes early for check-in; when I walked into the familiar blue-gray haze of smoke in the Bancroft butt room, Kittredge accosted me. I don’t know what wrestling hold it was. I would later try to describe it to Delacorte—who I heard didn’t do a bad job as Lear’s Fool, by the way. Between rinsing and spitting, Delacorte said: “It sounds like an arm-bar. Kittredge arm-bars the shit out of everyone.”