City of Girls

He was a medium-sized man with an average-looking face whose hair was one of the regular colors of hair, and who was dressed in the sort of suit that one might expect a respectable middle-aged gentleman of his class to be wearing. (If it sounds like I have completely forgotten what he looked like, it’s because I have completely forgotten what he looked like. He was the kind of man whose face you forget even when you are standing right in front of him, looking directly at his face.)

“Vivian,” he said, and extended a handshake. “Thank you for coming in today. Let’s head upstairs and get ourselves situated.”

He sounded every bit like the doctor he was. He sounded just like my pediatrician back home in Clinton. I might as well have been there to have an ear infection looked at. There was something both reassuring and immensely silly about this to me. I felt a giggle rising in my chest, but kept it suppressed.

We walked through his home, which was proper and elegant, but unmemorable. There were probably a hundred homes within a few blocks of us decorated exactly the same way. All I can remember were some silk-upholstered couches with doilies. I have always hated doilies. He led me straight to the guest room, where he had two glasses of champagne waiting on a small table. The curtains were drawn—so that we could pretend it wasn’t ten o’clock in the morning, I suppose—and he closed the door behind him.

“Make yourself comfortable on the bed, Vivian,” he said, handing me one of the champagne flutes.

I sat primly on the edge of the bed. I was half expecting him to wash his hands and come at me with a stethoscope, but instead he pulled over a wooden chair from a corner of the room, and sat directly across from me. He put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, in the manner of one whose job it is to diagnose.

“So, Vivian. Our friend Gladys tells me that you’re a virgin.”

“That’s correct, Doctor,” I said.

“There’s no need to call me Doctor. We are friends. You may call me Harold.”

“Why, thank you, Harold,” I said.

And from that moment on, Angela, the situation became hilarious to me. Whatever nervousness I’d felt up until that point was gone now, replaced by a sense of pure comedy. It was something about the sound of my voice saying, “Why, thank you, Harold,” in that small guest room with its stupid mint-green acetate quilted bedspread (I can’t remember Dr. Kellogg’s face, but I cannot forget that hideous goddamn bedspread) that struck me as the pinnacle of absurdity. There he was in his suit, and there I was in my buttercup-yellow rayon day dress—and if Dr. Kellogg didn’t believe that I was a virgin before we met, the little yellow frock alone should have convinced him.

The whole scene was absurd. He was accustomed to showgirls, and he was getting me.

“Now, Gladys informs me that you wish to have your virginity”—he was searching for a delicate word—“removed?”

“That’s correct, Harold,” I said. “I wish to have it expunged.”

(To this day, I believe that this line was the first intentionally funny thing I’d ever said in my life—and the fact that I said it with a straight face gave me no end of satisfaction. Expunged! Brilliant.)

He nodded; a good clinician with a bad sense of humor.

“Why don’t you get undressed,” he said, “and I will also get undressed, and we’ll start.”

I wasn’t sure if I should take off everything. Usually at the doctor’s office, I kept on my “step-ins”—as my mother always called my underwear. (But why was I thinking about my mother right now?) Then again, usually at the doctor’s office I wasn’t about to have sex with the doctor. I made a hasty decision to strip down completely. I didn’t want to look like a modest little dolt. I lay down on my back on that nauseating acetate bedspread, naked as can be. Arms straight down at my side and legs stiff. You know: like a proper temptress.

Dr. Kellogg stripped to his shorts and undershirt. This hardly seemed fair. Why was he allowed to remain partially dressed, when I had to be naked?

“Now if you’ll just kindly move over an inch or so, and make a bit of room for me . . .” he said. “There we go. . . . That’s it. . . . Let’s have a look at you.”

He lay beside me, head propped by his elbow, and had a look at me. I didn’t hate this moment as much as you might think. I was a vain young woman, and something within me thought it quite right that I should be looked at. Appearancewise, my chief concern was my bosom—or, rather, my near absence of a bosom. It didn’t seem to be an issue with Dr. Kellogg, though, despite the fact that he was used to a different class of figure altogether. In fact he seemed delighted with all that was offered up before him.

“Virgin breasts!” he marveled. “Never before touched by man!”

(Well, I thought, I wouldn’t say that. Never before touched by an adult man, maybe.)

“Forgive me if my hands are cold, Vivian,” he said, “but I’m going to begin touching you now.”