3 is not a Crowd

JWW: Obviously, these three particular individuals were not so constituted as to take turns delivering lengthy speeches. The cross-talk never stopped, nor did I see any reason to try to put a lid on it; I had an abundant supply of tape reels and more time than I knew what to do with. And I cannot recall an interview I enjoyed more. My editing has consisted largely of leaving the greater portion of the cross-talk on the cutting room floor. The result might have been more entertaining had everything been left precisely as it was, but space limitations ruled this out, for better or for worse.

PEGGY: Kay and I first got to know each other during our freshman year at college. At the time we were both majoring in English, although I later changed my major twice, first to psychology and then to biology, and she changed to history and then back to English again. We had a few classes together and got to know each other fairly well, although we were not enormously close. I had been planning to room the following year with another girl, but near the end of the spring she decided to transfer out, and I happened to mention to Kay that I didn’t have a roommate and neither did she, so we decided to room together.

KAY: And from such a small beginning bloomed love.

PEGGY: As far as sex was concerned, I had had a certain amount of experience. I had gone to a boarding prep school, and while it’s certainly possible to do this without having a sensitive homosexual experience, you wouldn’t really feel as though you had gotten the full benefit of such a costly education if you passed it up. I had had relations with four girls during prep school. Not big passionate love affairs, although we generally kept up a pretense of being in love with each other. We said the words, you know. And I’m sure a lot of the more neurotic girls took it very seriously, but I never did and I don’t think any of my partners did. I didn’t consider myself a lesbian, for example. Looking back on it, I think I had a marvelously healthy attitude. I decided that sleeping with another girl was more fun than sleeping alone and playing with another girl was more fun than playing with oneself.

KAY: And eating another girl was more fun than eating yourself, and with less wear and tear on the backbone.

PEGGY: The whole thing in prep school could have been a lot more traumatic if I hadn’t managed to get myself laid somewhere along the line. I think if my whole frame of reference had been affairs with other girls, it would have bothered me more. But as it happened I lost my virginity at fifteen, which was almost a full year before I put a finger into any vagina other than my own, and I made it with a couple of other boys while I was at that school.

I was the only girl from my class at the college I went to, so there was nothing connecting me to the past. Of course the place was crawling with dykes but I didn’t know any of them and didn’t feel in a mood to seek them out. As a matter of fact I was in a fairly withdrawn stage during my freshman year, very determined to do well academically and not too anxious to have sex with anybody, male or female. I had had a pregnancy scare that I was a long time recovering from, and I didn’t even feel like dating or even developing a close friendship, let alone like balling anybody.

Things might have been different if someone had felt strongly enough to make a pass at me, but nobody did. The girl they had me rooming with was this maniacal Christer from one of those states you fly over. Nebraska, I think it was. She kept falling down and praying all the time. No exaggeration. We would be studying and all of a sudden she would drop the books and flop on her hands and knees and start praying out loud. I really didn’t know how to handle this. I got very abusive and would tell her to fuck off and shove her Bible up her ass. Ladylike things like that.

And she used to fingerfuck herself every damn night. We would both pretend I didn’t know what she was doing, and toward the end of the year I got particularly bitchy. I would wait until I knew she was about three digits away from orgasm and then I would start talking to her and throw her off stride.

I always knew when she came, because then she would start in again with the praying.

Surprising as it may seem, I didn’t try to get into her pants. Oh, she also had pimples, and she used one of those deodorants that smells worse than body odor. My God, I wonder where she is now. That poor girl. And I was so cruel to her.

I had a summer romance before my sophomore year. I went out to the Cape and wound up screwing a pre-law student from Northeastern. His main attraction was that he was there, and mine was that I would put out. It wasn’t sensational.