Chapter Three
I lay beside her, relaxed, my hand lightly touching, continuing to explore. I traced the circle of her areola, lightly brushing the light dusting of hair there. Then I stroked her armpit, smoothing the hair there. I stroked the soft down around her navel and then down to the thicker, longer hair of her pubic mound. I was petting her like a cat and absolutely fascinated with her body.
"I've always hated it, you know," she said, very softly, her eyes open and looking straight up at the ceiling. It was like a barrier had been breached and she could finally start talking.
"Puberty struck when I was very young," she said, her voice just a bit above a whisper. "I was 11 when I had my first period and the body hair started coming in immediately. Then came 7th grade and gym class and locker rooms and I was pretty much constantly teased."
I watched, fascinated as a tear overflowed her right eye and ran down the side of her face, wetting the hair of her temple, and realized that this was probably the first time she had said any of this to anyone.
"When your Uncle John proposed and I said 'yes,' in part it was to escape the teasing," she went on after a long pause. "And you've seen how the women in the church dress. But every day I could see it in the mirror and wondered if I could get rid of it. But it would have been so expensive to get rid of, and I didn't have anything like that kind of money."
She finally turned her head to look at me.
"If I'm too disgusting and you want to leave now, well, I understand, Davey," she said. "You've done enough for a crazy old woman."
I lost it.
I was howling with laughter. The only thing close to this was the few times I had gotten the giggles when I was high on pot and had laughed so hard I couldn't stop myself.
And she was suddenly angry. "What the fuck," she screamed, "you think this is funny?"
I wrapped her in a bearhug, more a boxer's clinch than an embrace, holding her tight so her punches couldn't gain power.
I couldn't stop laughing. It had all come together so suddenly. Here I was, thinking how beautiful, how exotic, how goddam purely sexy she was and she had started talking about how ashamed she was of precisely what I found so damn erotic.
"Stop," I managed, at last, laughing and holding onto her under her hail of ineffective punches, "stop hitting me."
I hung on and she kept going like that for some time, I really have no idea how long, while I got myself under control.
Finally, I got my hands between us and pushed her away enough to look into her eyes.
"Stop it," I said again, a kind of combined laugh/yell, "and let me tell you EXACTLY why it's funny."
I'm not sure if it was my command voice or just the fact that she was tiring anyway, but she stopped.
"What IS funny," I said, "is how completely, absolutely, utterly, astonishingly backward you have it."