he sculptor had become my best friend. I was anxiously watching his statuette coming to a finish. Then one morning when I arrived I saw that he had ruined it. He said that he had tried to work on it without me. But he did not seem unhappy or worried. I was quite sad, and to me it looked very much like sabotage, because it seemed spoiled with such awkwardness. I saw that he was happy to be beginning it all over again.

It was at the theatre that I met John and discovered the power of a voice. It rolled over me like the tones of a pipe organ, making me vibrate. When he repeated my name and mispronounced it, it sounded to me like a caress. It was the deepest, richest voice I had ever heard. I could scarcely look at him. I knew that his eyes were big, of an intense, magnetic blue, that he was large, rather restless. His foot moved nervously like that of a race horse. I felt his presence blurring everything else—the theatre, the friend sitting at my right. And he behaved as if I had enchanted him, hypnotized him. He talked on, looking at me, but I was not listening. In one moment I was no longer a young girl. Every time he spoke, I felt myself falling into some dizzy spiral, falling into the meshes of a beautiful voice. It was truly a drug. When he had finally “stolen” me, as he said, he hailed a taxi.

We did not say another word until we reached his apartment. He had not touched me. He did not need to. His presence had affected me in such a way that I felt as if he had caressed me for a long time.

He merely said my name twice, as if he thought it sufficiently beautiful to repeat. He was tall, glowing. His eyes were so intensely blue that when they blinked, for a second it was like some tiny flash of lightning, giving one a sense of fear, a fear of a storm that would completely engulf one.

Then he kissed me. His tongue went around mine, around and around, and then it stopped to touch the tip only. As he kissed me he slowly lifted my skirt. He unrolled my garters, my stockings. Then he lifted me up and carried me to the bed. I was so dissolved that I felt he had already penetrated me. It seemed to me that his voice had opened me, opened my whole body to him. He sensed this, and so he was amazed by the resistance to his penis that he felt.

He stopped to look at my face. He saw the great emotional receptiveness, and then he pressed harder. I felt the tear and the pain, but the warmth melted everything, the warmth of his voice in my ear saying, “Do you want me as I want you?”

Then his pleasure made him groan. His whole weight upon me, pressing against my body, the shaft of pain vanished. I felt the joy of being opened. I lay there in a semidream.

John said, “I hurt you. You did not enjoy it.” I could not say, “I want it again.” My hand touched his penis. I caressed it. It sprung up, so hard. He kissed me until I felt a new wave of desire, a desire to respond completely. But he said, “It will hurt now. Wait a little while. Can you stay with me, all night? Will you stay?”

I saw that there was blood on my leg. I went to wash it off. I felt that I had not been taken yet, that this was only a small part of the breaking through. I wanted to be possessed and know blinding joys. I walked unsteadily and fell on the bed again.

John was asleep, his big body still curved as when he was lying against me, his arm thrown out where my head had been resting. I slipped in at his side and fell half-asleep. I wanted to touch his penis again. I did so gently, not wanting to wake him. Then I slept and was awakened by his kisses. We were floating in a dark world of flesh, feeling only the soft flesh vibrating, and every touch was a joy. He gripped my hips tautly against him. He was afraid to wound me. I parted my legs. When he inserted his penis it hurt, but the pleasure was greater. There was a little outer rim of pain and, deeper in, a pleasure at the presence of his penis moving there. I pressed forwards, to meet it.

This time he was passive. He said, “You move, you enjoy it now.” So as not to feel the pain, I moved gently around his penis. I put my closed fists under my backside to raise myself towards him. He placed my legs on his shoulders. Then the pain grew greater and he withdrew.

I left him in the morning, dazed, but with a new joy of feeling that I was growing nearer to passion. I went home and slept until he telephoned.

“When are you coming?” he said. “I must see you again. Soon. Are you posing today?”

“Yes, I must. I’ll come after the pose.”

“Please don’t pose,” he said, “please don’t pose. It makes me desperate to think of it. Come and see me first. I want to talk to you. Please come and see me first.”

I went to him. “Oh,” he said, burning my face with the breath of his desire, “I can’t bear to think of you posing now, exposing yourself. You can’t do that anymore. You must let me take care of you. I cannot marry you because I have a wife and children. Let me take care of you until we know how we can escape. Let me get a little place where I can come and see you. You should not be posing. You belong to me.”

So I entered a secret life, and when I was supposed to be posing for everyone else in the world, I was really waiting in a beautiful room for John. Each time he came, he brought a gift, a book, colored stationery for me to write on. I was restless, waiting.

The only one who was taken into the secret was the sculptor because he sensed what was happening. He would not let me stop posing, and he questioned me. He had predicted how my life would be.

The first time I felt an orgasm with John, I wept because it was so strong and so marvelous that I did not believe it could happen over and over again. The only painful moments were the ones spent waiting. I would bathe myself, spread polish on my nails, perfume myself, rouge my nipples, brush my hair, put on a negligée, and all the preparations would turn my imagination to the scenes to come.

I wanted him to find me in the bath. He would say he was on his way. But he would not arrive. He was often detained. By the time he arrived I would be cold, resentful. The waiting wore out my feelings. I would rebel. Once I would not answer when he rang the doorbell. Then he knocked gently, humbly, and that touched me, so I opened the door. But I was angry and wanted to hurt him. I did not respond to his kiss. He was hurt until his hand slipped under my negligée and he found that I was wet, in spite of the fact that I kept my legs tightly closed. He was joyous again and he forced his way.

Then I punished him by not responding sexually and he was hurt again, for he enjoyed my pleasure. He knew by the violent heartbeats, by the changes in the voice, by the contraction of my legs, how I had enjoyed him. And this time I lay like a whore. That really hurt him.

We could never go out together. He was too well known, as was his wife. He was a producer. His wife was a playwright.

When John discovered how angry it would make me to wait for him, he did not try to remedy it. He came later and later. He would say that he was arriving at ten o’clock and then come at midnight. So one day he found that I was not there when he came. This put him in a frenzy. He thought I would not come back. I felt that he was doing this deliberately, that he liked my being angry. After two days he pleaded with me and I returned. We were both very keyed up and angry.

He said, “You’ve gone back to pose. You like it. You like to show yourself.”

“Why do you make me wait so long? You know that it kills my desire for you. I feel cold when you come late.”

“Not so very cold,” he said.

I closed my legs tightly against him, he could not even touch me. But then he slipped in quickly from behind and caressed me. “Not so cold,” he said.

On the bed he pushed his knee between my legs and forced them open. “When you are angry,” he said, “I feel that I am raping you. I feel then that you love me so much you cannot resist me, I see that you are wet, and I like your resistance and your defeat too.”

“John, you will make me so angry that I will leave you.”

Then he was frightened. He kissed me. He promised not to repeat this.

What I could not understand was that, despite our quarrels, being made love to by John made me only more sensitive. He had awakened my body. Now I had even a greater desire to abandon myself to all whims. He must have known this, because the more he caressed me, awakened me, the more he feared that I would return to posing. Slowly, I did return. I had too much time to myself, I was too much alone with my thoughts of John.

MILLARD particularly was happy to see me. He must have spoiled the statuette again, purposely I knew now, so he could keep me in the pose he liked.

The night before, he had smoked marijuana with friends. He said, “Did you know that very often it gives people the feeling that they are transformed into animals? Last night there was a woman who was completely taken by this transformation. She fell on her hands and knees and walked around like a dog. We took her clothes off. She wanted to give milk. She wanted us to act like puppies, sprawl on the floor and suckle at her breasts. She kept on her hands and knees and offered her breasts to all of us. She wanted us to walk like dogs—after her. She insisted on our taking her in this position, from behind, and I did, but then I was terribly tempted to bite her as I crouched over her. I bit into her shoulder harder than I have ever bitten anyone. The woman did not get frightened. I did. It sobered me. I stood up and then I saw that a friend of mine was following her on his hands and knees, not caressing her or taking her, but merely smelling exactly as a dog would do, and this reminded me so much of my first sexual impression that it gave me a painful hard-on.

“As children we had a big servant girl in the country who came from Martinique. She wore voluminous skirts and a colored kerchief on her head. She was a rather pale mulatto, very beautiful. She would make us play hide-and-seek. When it was my turn to hide she would hide me under her skirt, sitting down. And there I was, half suffocated, hiding between her legs. I remember the sexual odor that came from her and that stirred me even as a boy. Once I tried to touch her, but she slapped my hand.”

I was posing quietly and he came over to measure me with an instrument. Then I felt his hand on my thighs, caressing me so lightly. I smiled at him. I stood on the model’s stand, and he was caressing my legs now, as if he were modeling me out of clay. He kissed my feet, he ran his hands up my legs again and again, and around my ass. He leaned against my legs and kissed me. He lifted me up and brought me down to the floor. He held me tightly against him, caressing my back and shoulders and neck. I shivered a little. His hands were smooth and supple. He touched me as he touched the statuette, so caressingly, all over.

Then we walked towards the couch. He lay me there on my stomach. He took his clothes off and fell on me. I felt his penis against my ass. He slipped his hands around my waist and lifted me up slightly so that he could penetrate me. He lifted me up towards him rhythmically. I closed my eyes to feel him better and to listen to the sound of the penis sliding in and out of the moisture. He pushed so violently that it made tiny clicks, which delighted me.

His fingers dug into my flesh. His nails were sharp and hurt. He aroused me so much with his vigorous thrusts that my mouth opened and I was biting into the couch cover. Then at the same time we both heard a sound. Millard rose swiftly, picked up his clothes and ran up the ladder to the balcony where he kept his sculpture. I slipped behind the screen.

There came a second knock on the studio door, and his wife came in. I was trembling, not with fear, but the shock of having stopped in the middle of our enjoyment. Millard’s wife saw the studio empty and left. Millard came out dressed. I said, “Wait for me a minute,” and began to dress too. The moment was destroyed. I was still wet and shivering. When I slipped on my panties the silk touch affected me like a hand. I could not bear the tension and desire any longer. I put my two hands over my sex as Millard had done and pressed against it, closing my eyes and imagining Millard was caressing me. And I came shaking from head to foot.

Millard wanted to be with me again, but not in his studio where we might be surprised by his wife, so I let him find another place. It belonged to a friend. The bed was set in a deep alcove and there were mirrors above the bed and small dim lamps. Millard wanted all the lights out, he said he wanted to be in the dark with me.

“I have seen your body and I know it so well, now I want to feel it, with my eyes closed, just to feel the skin and the softness of the flesh. Your legs are so firm and strong, but so soft to the touch. I love your feet with the toes free and set apart like the fingers of a hand, not cramped—and the toenails so beautifully lacquered—and the down on your legs.” He passed his hand all over my body, slowly, pressing into the flesh, feeling every curve. “If my hand stays here between the legs,” he said, “do you feel it, do you like it, do you want it nearer?”

“Nearer, nearer,” I said.

“I want to teach you something,” said Millard. “Do you want to let me do it?”

He inserted his finger inside my sex. “Now, I want you to contract around my finger. There is a muscle there that can be made to contract and expand around the penis. Try.”

I tried. His finger there was tantalizing. Since he was not moving it, I tried to move inside of my womb, and I felt the muscle that he mentioned, weakly at first, opening and closing around the finger.

Millard said, “Yes, like that. Do it stronger, stronger.”

So I did, opening, closing, opening, closing. It was like a little mouth inside, tightening around the finger. I wanted to take it in, suckle at it and so I continued to try.

Then Millard said that he would insert his penis and not move and that I should continue to move inside. I tried with more and more strength to clutch at him. The motion was exciting me, and I felt that at any moment I would reach the orgasm, but after I had clutched at him several times, sucking his penis in, he suddenly groaned with pleasure and began to push quickly, as he himself could not hold back the orgasm. I merely continued the inner motion and I felt the orgasm, too, in the most marvelous deep way, deep inside of the womb.

He said, “Did John ever show you this?”

“No.”

“What has he shown you?”

“This,” I said. “You kneel over me and push.”

Millard obeyed. His penis did not have much strength, for it was too soon after the first orgasm, but he slipped it in, pushing it with his hand. Then I reached out with my two hands and caressed the balls and put two fingers at the basis of the penis and rubbed as he moved. Millard was instantly aroused, his penis hardened, and he began to move in and out again. Then he stopped himself.

“I must not be so demanding,” he said in a strange tone. “You will be tired out for John.”

We lay back and rested, smoking. I was wondering if Millard had felt more than sensual desire, whether my love for John weighed on him. But although there was always a hurt sound to his words, he continued to ask me questions.

“Did John have you today? Did he take you more than once? How did he take you?”

In the weeks to come, Millard taught me many things I had not done with John, and as soon as I learned them I tried them with John. Finally he became suspicious of where I was learning new positions. He knew I had not made love before I met him. The first time I tightened my muscles to clutch at his penis, he was amazed.

The two secret relationships became difficult for me, but I enjoyed the danger and the intensity.