Gwen, in Green

He was warm, obviously sensual, but he never tried to handle her, never forced her to indulge in the college ritual of making out. When he asked her to marry him, she’d never felt a male hand on her breast, had not even used Tampax, not able to bear even the thought of having a sanitary tube inserted into that virginal tract. Gwen the prude. Gwen the nut.

So she told him and he listened. “I wouldn’t be good for you,” she concluded. “You deserve a warm, exciting woman. Not me. You can have any girl you want. Why me?”

That grin. “I always promised my mother I’d marry a good girl, and you’re the only virgin in North Carolina above three years old.”

“Gee,” she said flippantly, “what a solid foundation for a marriage.”

She refused to see him for months. When the year was ending, he cracked up his motorcycle coming up the hill from Durham, whammed into a series of pine trees, de­molished the bike, lay in the hospital with a severe concus­sion.

“God, Gwen,” he said, seeing her there when he re­gained consciousness, “I feel like a seven-­acre boil.”

“You’re Gwen,” his mother said. “We’ve heard so much about you. And I’m so pleased you’ve come. George was asking for you while he was delirious.”

Asking for her.

When he was ambulant, they drove in a borrowed car to Raleigh, checked in nervously at a Holiday Inn. “I won’t marry you,” she told him, bleeding inside but making the sacrifice, “but I will show you why.”

He thought a drink would relax her. But when he undressed her, she felt as if her body were made of steel and ice. His hands caused her to cringe. He was kind, patient, gentle. His heated breathing made her hate him, made him the embodiment of all that long parade of face­less men who breathed and grunted and wallowed with her mother. She lay stiff as oak, suffering his hands, his kisses.

“We’ll stop,” he said.

“No,” she said, tears running down her cheeks. “I have to prove to you.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you and I want you to understand.”

“Can’t you relax?”

“Yes.”

She was limp. She did not cry out when he penetrated her. She was dry and it was painful. She was pleased that it hurt her so. She wanted to be punished, for she was hurting him, too. He loved her, wanted her. And she had nothing to give—nothing, that is, which would compen­sate him for devoting his life to her. She lay limply as he worked in her and he stopped.

“Don’t you feel anything?”

“I feel dirty,” she said cruelly.

“God,” he said, stopping his movement. He lay there for a long time. He talked to her, told her she was beau­tiful. She was not. She had mouse-­brown hair which was fine as baby hair and completely unmanageable. She had a nose too long for her face. Her skin was mottled by dark, frecklelike blemishes. Had they been freckles, they would have been cutely attractive, but as blemishes they were just disfiguring. She was small-­breasted. Her thighs did not meet, giving her a bow-­legged look as she stood before her mirror naked. Her ankles, because of her weak arches, tended to touch, her feet splaying outward. Her two front teeth showed a large gap. No, she was not beautiful.

“You have a great ass,” he said. “And I love your titties.”

She was sick with shame, feverish with disgust.

“We could work on it,” he said. “It’s normal, Gwen, sex is.”

“I know. I’m not normal, though.”

“Does it make any difference that I love you, that I want to help you?”

Apparently it did. His patience, his gentleness, paid off. Not the first time. The first time his youthful eagerness pushed him over the brink and she felt his seminal fluid rush into her. She felt nauseous, hating his sweating body, his gasping breathing, his clinging.

“You see,” she said, “as I told you, I feel nothing. Do you believe me now?”

“A lot of girls don’t enjoy it the first time,” he said.

“I hated it, George,” she said. “That’s the difference.”

“Did you hate me?”

“Yes, when you were . . . doing it.”

“I see.”

“So you see that it would be a mistake.”

“Would you let me try again?”

She wanted to bathe his sweat from her, wanted to be away from him, away so that she could rid herself of his filthy sperm, wash his taste from her mouth. But he was so concerned, so hurt. She allowed him to make love to her. He did vile things. First he cleaned her with a cloth from the bathroom, then he did a thing so sickening that she almost made him stop. Only her desire not to hurt him more, to convince him that marriage was impossible, stopped her from bolting.

“Nothing?” He had a moustache. He was revolting. She was crying quietly. To hide it from him, she bent up, pulled the sheet over his crouching body, hid his head and shoul­ders and face beneath it. Then she could pretend it wasn’t happening. He was a warm-­wet feeling there, that was all. She closed her eyes. It was growing dark outside. It went on and on and she was able to divorce herself from the act.