3 is not a Crowd

Kay and I became extremely close, and at this time neither of us was at all close with anyone else. And I knew what she was going through, what a screwed-up sex life she had had during the past year, all the conflicts that had been messing her up. We would talk about all of these things. In addition I found her enormously attractive physically, which is something you shouldn’t find terribly hard to understand.

JERRY: Hear, hear!

PEGGY: I wasn’t doing anything with boys at the time. No interest. So all my impulses were directed toward Kay. I wanted more than anything to make love to her, but I had to keep cool about the whole thing because the last thing I wanted to do was ruin the really beautiful relationship we had going.

KAY: I was just thinking. Suppose you never did make that pass.

PEGGY: Oh, it had to happen sooner or later.

KAY: Look what we might have missed.

PEGGY: I don’t even want to think about it.

The night it happened, Kay went out on a date with some yoyo from Williams. She had never met him but someone fixed her up and she wanted to turn the date down but decided the hell with it, she would go. I studied for a while and then just moped around the room wishing she hadn’t gone. I had a couple of drinks and put bluesy stuff on the record player and sat around feeling deliciously sorry for myself.

When Kay came back she was in tears. Literally. She was pretty much hysterical. Her clothes were a mess and her face was all runny with tears. She opened her coat and said, “Look at this, the son of a bitch came all over my dress!”

KAY: He really was a son of a bitch. He wrestled with me for half an hour trying to screw me, and I wouldn’t, and he slapped me and tried to stick it in my mouth, and I wouldn’t let him, and then he just pushed me down on the seat and got on top of me and jerked himself off all over the front of my dress, which I was wearing for, I think, the second time. “You can have it cleaned,” he said. “Listen, I’ll pay to have it cleaned. And it wouldn’t have gotten like that if you were just sensible in the first place. You’re not a virgin, for Christ’s sake, so why make a fuss about it? Why not just put out?”

He was a real charmer. I said something devastatingly witty like “Go fuck yourself” and went back to the room, crying every step of the way.

It was the way he treated me. It was just so disgusting, so cheap. I felt like a wastebasket.

PEGGY: I made her have a couple of drinks, and got her clothes off. We threw the dress out. She didn’t want to have it cleaned, didn’t want to look at it again. She went down the hall and showered until her skin was raw and then came back wrapped up in a terrycloth robe. A yellow robe. I can picture her in it so vividly even now, and I made us both fresh drinks, and we sat on her bed together and I knew tonight was the night. I just loved her so much at that moment and wanted to do something good for her.

KAY: She suddenly leaned over and kissed me. On the mouth. I just sat there feeling stupid. Not reacting at all. Then she put her hands on my shoulders and kissed me again. And I didn’t think. I just responded. I kissed back, and my mouth opened, and she put her tongue in my mouth—

JERRY: Oh, you sly devil, you.

KAY: —and something happened. I just felt totally warm and passionate, but passionate without being at all tense. I knew something weird was happening but I just locked out thoughts and concentrated completely on what was happening. I stayed with the present and didn’t get involved with the future at all. I wanted it to go on forever, the kissing. Her arms around me and our breasts pressing together and our tongues working. I just wanted it to go on forever.

We kissed for a very long time. It was such an unusual experience.

Then we came up for air, and I reached for my cigarettes and lit one, and Peggy took a drag on it and gave it back to me, and I took a drag and put it down on the edge of the dresser and looked at her, and our eyes locked. I couldn’t speak right away. Then I said, “Well, what happens now?”

PEGGY: I said, “Now I’m going to make love to you.”

KAY: I said, “I don’t know anything about this.”

She said, “Don’t worry, just let me love you, that’s all.”

I said, “Do you know what you’re doing?” She said she did. I wanted to know if she had ever done this before. She said that she had. I was full of questions but she kissed me again and told me not to talk, and then she made love to me. She took off my robe and I lay down on the bed and she stretched out alongside me and kissed me. While we kissed she took off her own clothes and when she was naked and our bodies touched I just put my arms around her and held her close and felt contented in a wholly unfamiliar way. I had never had any feeling remotely like this. I was very frightened in a part of my mind, but I somehow knew that everything was going to be good.