Sophie's Choice - William Styron [273]
And as she talks to me, telling me about her late lamented amour, a ghastly Cosmopolitan short story emerges, explaining simultaneously the sexual morality of these 1940s and the psychopathology which permits her to torment me in the way she has been doing. She had a fiancé, one Walter, she tells me, a naval aviator who courted her for four months. During this time before their engagement (she explains to me in circumlocutory language to which Mrs. Grundy would not have taken exception) they did not participate in formal sexual relations, although at his behest she did learn, presumably with the same lackluster and rhythmic skill she has practiced on me, to flog his dick (“stimulate him”), and indulged in this pastime night after night as much to give him some “release” (she actually uses the odious word) as to protect the velvet strongbox he was perishing to get into. (Four months! Think of Walt’s Navy-blue trousers and those oceans of come!) Only when the wretched flyboy formally declared his intentions to marry and then produced the ring (Mary Alice continues to tell me in vapid innocence) did she yield up her darling honey pot, for in the Baptist faith of her upbringing, woe as certain as death would alight upon those who would engage in carnal congress without at least the prospect of matrimony. Indeed, as she goes on to say, she felt it wicked enough to do what she did before the actual hitching of the knot. At this point Mary Alice pauses and, backtracking, says something to me which causes me to grind my teeth in rage. “It’s not that I don’t desire you, Stingo. I have strong desires. Walter taught me to make love.” And while she continues to talk, murmurously spinning out her banalities about “consideration,” “tenderness,” “fidelity,” “understanding,” “sympathy” and other Christian garbage, I have an unusual and overpowering longing to perpetrate a rape. Anyway, to conclude her tale, Walter left her before the wedding day—the shock of her life. “That was how I got burnt so badly, Stingo, and I just don’t want to get burnt that way again.”
I am silent for a while. “I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s a sad story,” I add, trying to still the sarcasm striving to be expressed. “Very sad. I guess it happens to a lot of people. But I think I know why Walter left you. And tell me something, Mary Alice, do you really think that two healthy young people who are attracted to each other have to go through this masquerade about marriage before they fuck each other? Do you really?” I feel her turn rigid and hear her gasp at the horrid verb; she pulls away from me, and something about her prissy chagrin enrages me more. She is suddenly (and I now see justifiably) astounded at my unplugged fury spilling forth and as I too pull away and stand up shaking, quite out of control now, I see her lips, all smeared with the red goo of our kissing, form a little oval of fright. “Walter didn’t teach you to make love, you lying creepy little idiot!” I say loudly. “I’ll bet you’ve never had a good fuck in your life! All Walter taught you was how to jerk off the poor slobs who want to get into your pants! You need something to make that beautiful ass of yours gyrate with joy, a big stiff prick rammed into that cunt you’ve got locked up, oh shit—” I break off in a strangled cry, smothered with shame at my outburst but near loony laughter too, for Mary Alice has stuck her fingers in her ears like a six-year-old and the tears are rolling down her cheeks, I give a beery belch. I am repulsive. Yet I still cannot restrain myself from howling at her,