Odd Girl Out

It would never have entered her mind to doubt that Beth was solidly normal, because Laura thought that she herself was perfectly normal and she wasn’t attracted to men. She thought simply that men were unnecessary to her. That wasn’t unusual; lots of women live without men.

What Laura would never know, and Beth would never tell her, was the real reason she had given up seeing men. Beth had, over and above most people, a strongly affectionate nature, a strong curiosity, and a strong experimental bent. She would give anything a first try, and morality didn’t bother her. Her own was mainly a comfortable hedonism. What she wanted she went after. At the time she met Laura, she wanted to be loved more than anything else.

Beth had always wanted to be loved. She wanted to feel, not to dream; to know, not to wonder. She started as a little girl, trying to win her aunt and uncle in her search for love. Loving them was like trying to love a foam-rubber pillow: they allowed themselves to be squeezed but they popped right back into shape when they were released.

Unknowingly, her aunt and uncle had started Beth on a long, anxious search for love. When she couldn’t find it with them she turned to others, and when she grew up she turned to men. It was the natural thing to do; it was inevitable. For Beth grew up to be a very pretty girl, and when she began looking for a man to satisfy her she found more than one always willing to try.

But none of them made it. First there was George, when she was still in high school. She was just fifteen and George was a Princeton man in his twenties. Beth liked them “older”; and the older ones liked her. George fell very much in love with her. He was fun, he had been places, he could take her out and show her a good time … and he adored her. Her word was law.

Beth administered the law for two years. The time began to drag interminably toward the end of the second year. George smothered her with love, and she began to doubt and to despise herself for not returning his passion. Here was real love, what she had always craved to make her life complete and meaningful, and what did it give her? A headache. George bored her.

It was in this mood that she gave herself to George. She was seventeen. George, on his knees, had implored her not to go to college; to stay at home and marry him and make him The Happiest Man in the World. She said, “No, George, I can’t.”

And he said, “Why?”

“Because I don’t love you.” Her heart rose in her throat, in fear and pity—fear for herself and pity for George.

George wept. He wept very eloquently. “I’ll kill myself,” he murmured in a misery so genuine that she began to fear for him, too.

“Oh, no, you mustn’t! You can’t!” she said. “Here, George. Come here, George.” She called him like a faithful spaniel, and he came, and let himself be petted. And very shortly he felt a sort of dismal passion rising in him with his self-pity; he began to sweat.

“Beth.” He said her name fiercely. “Look at me. Look what you’ve done to me.”

Beth gasped and then covered the lower part of her face with her hands so he couldn’t hear her laugh.

“Oh, George,” she whispered in a voice shaky with suppressed amusement. George took it very well; he thought her trembling voice was paying him tribute.

And suddenly Beth thought to herself very clearly, Oh, hell. Oh, the hell with it. She was quite calm and she said to George, “Come here.” Somewhere in the back of her mind was the hope that this would solve her problem, answer her questions, set things right. She might not love George, but at least she would discover the end of love. Next time she met a desirable man, she would know everything there was to know. She would be prepared and it would all be beautiful as nothing with George had been beautiful.

Beth unbuttoned her skirt and let it slip to the floor.

Hesitantly, with a flushed face and a nervous cough, George approached her. And in less than a minute they were on the couch together and Beth was learning about love.

After that there followed a long procession of boys, mostly college men. The novelty wore off early for Beth, but not the hope and promise; she was an incurable optimist. It took her three years of indefatigable effort to convince herself that it wasn’t the men who were at fault—at least not all of them. The laws of chance were against it. But it was one thing to realize that some of the men were good lovers and another thing entirely to admit that not even the best of them could rouse her. What was wrong? She was healthy and eager and willing; she wanted it, she had always wanted some kind of love. Was it George’s fault for making her laugh at it? Or her aunt’s and uncle’s for making her weep? It took her a long time to see that it wasn’t the fault of any one of them, but rather of all of them, and of herself. That was the bitterest pill. And after she confessed to herself that something prevented her from finding the love she so wanted she became rather cynical about it. The bitterness never showed, but it was there. She was just a little contemptuous of men because none of them had been able to satisfy her; it was much more comfortable than being contemptuous of herself for a fault she couldn’t understand.

Laura, sitting alone in the room with Emily on a lonely Monday night, could not have known any of this. Even Emily, who had been Beth’s closest friend throughout her college years, knew nothing of it.

At ten-fifteen Beth walked in and the atmosphere in the room lightened up noticeably. Laura gave her a glad smile.

“Hello, children,” Beth said, smiling at them both.

“Long meeting?” said Emily, stretching.

“No, short meeting. Long coffee break.” She dropped her notebook on the desk and slipped out of her coat. “Laur, for God’s sake, aren’t you uncomfortable?” she said suddenly, laughing. “Makes me want to wiggle just to look at you. Here, swing your leg over this thing.” And when Laura hesitated she took her leg and lifted it herself over one wing of the butterfly.

“It comes up between your legs,” she said. “Now put your head back.”

Laura moved her head back gingerly as if she expected it to fall off her shoulders at any moment. Beth pushed it back against the high wing of the chair, laughing at her.

“Now, isn’t that better?” she said, mussing Laura’s hair.

“Yes, thanks. Much better.” And Laura had to smile back at her. The real world, with its real bumps and backslides and perplexities, was never farther away.

Three

On Saturday night Laura went out with the two fraternity boys and Emily. They walked to Maxie’s, one of the oldest campus joints, and drank beer and listened to the Dixie Six. Bud put on almost as much of a show as the musicians; Bud was Emmy’s flame—Bud was “it.” He would drop his head in his hands and groan at the bad notes and at the good ones exclaim, “Christ! Listen, Emmy!”

Bud was slender and tall, with thinning brown curls and round green eyes. He had remarkably sensual lips with straight white teeth behind them, and an impish smile. He was a well-known campus musician, one of the best; his reputation with a horn and with women far outweighed his reputation among his professors in music school.

He was a sort of perpetual student; the type that comes back year after year and never quite graduates. He loved music and he loved girls, and he seemed to exist quite satisfactorily on beer and slide oil and kisses. He was a campus character; one of the ones everybody knows, or hears about and wants to know.

Emily was the only girl who had ever come near to hooking him. It wasn’t the physical attraction; Bud liked them all pretty; he wouldn’t have taken her out the first time unless she had fulfilled that qualification. It wasn’t her twinkling charm or her compliance, either; it was all of these plus her willingness and ability to learn something about music—his kind of music. She was learning how to play the piano, spending long hours at it, so she could talk to Bud in his own language. All these attractions weren’t enough to keep him from surveying the field and finding a little competition for her, but as it happened that was the best possible way to intrigue Emmy, who liked to “work for a man.” He was fast becoming her major subject, and Laura and Beth had to sit through several monologues on his merits as man and musician.

Laura examined him curiously. The music didn’t move her, but everybody else was so excited that she pretended to be. She didn’t understand the mass fervor but she was afraid to say so, and she sat and watched the band like the others.

Fortunately it was not very hard to be friendly at beer parties, and the more beer you drank the easier it was. Not that Laura could drink very much. But Jim, Bud’s friend, did famously. With every passing quart he got friendlier. Toward the end of the evening anything in skirts was irresistible, and the handiest skirt was Laura’s. He made an effort to get better acquainted, draping an arm over her and squeezing her into the corner of the booth with the warm weight of his body. He put a hand on her thigh and began to press it, and Laura looked to Emily in sudden alarm. She hated to let a man touch her and she hated even worse to let him do it in public. But Emily was too preoccupied with Bud to notice that her roommate wanted help.

“Jim—” Laura said helplessly, and wondered wildly what to say next. Maybe all sorority girls did this. Maybe this was part of the price of membership.

When Laura hesitated in confusion, Jim thought she was searching for a way to encourage him, and he began, as he thought, to make it easy for her. He murmured, “What, baby?” in her ear, and “Tell me, come on,” with a nauseating intimacy, and began to plant wet kisses on her neck and cheek, his hand closing harder on her thigh, until it started to hurt.

Laura trembled in revolt and he breathed, “Oh, baby!” and pulled her chin around and kissed her lips. The hot blush burned her face and she thanked God for the bath of pink neon that disguised it.

“I was all wrong about you, Laura,” he whispered, and his lips brushed hers and they moved.

Laura wanted to claw at him, to burst from that terrible basement into the cold air and run and run and run until it was all miles behind her.

He kissed her again; a man’s lips were claiming her own, and it was all so new, so alarming, that it took her breath from her.

“Jim—” she said.

He kissed her again, harder.

“Oh, Jim, please!” and she turned her head away sharply against the wall of the booth. It was unbearable. No punishment could be worse than this. She waited, shaking, for him to reprimand her.

Instead he stroked her leg and leaned over her and said softly, “I understand, baby. Believe me. We’ll have time later.”

Laura thought she might be sick. It was no consolation to her to suddenly discover that she might be attractive to a man. She heard Emily’s voice across the table with such grateful relief that she almost reached out to clutch at her.

“Well, look here!” said Emmy. “Look who’s hitting it off!” She smiled a pleased smile. Emmy was a born matchmaker.

Jim straightened up a little and grinned at her. “Why sure,” he said. “Just took us a little while to find each other. Kinda dark down here.” He was delighted to have discovered an unexpected warm spell at the end of a chilly evening.

They laughed, and Emily gave Laura an approving smile that made Laura weak. It was apparently not only right but expected that she should let Jim maul her. Beth! she thought with sudden desperate force. Oh, Beth, if only you were here! The thought came unbidden out of the blue.

The two couples walked home together to the Alpha Beta house, Jim with a tight grip around Laura. She could feel his hip bone grind smooth and hard around its socket where their bodies were pressed together. She hid her cold helpless hands in her pockets and put her head down against Jim’s jacket. The grating of the wool on her tender skin was a comfort to her; it was utterly disassociated from human flesh and just irritating enough to assuage her conscience.

She murmured, “Yes” and “No” to Jim when she had to, and when she tried to keep him from kissing her, he took it affably as part of the game. And all the while Laura thought of Beth, so strong, so lovely, so gentle. She tried to peer through the defiant dark for the lights of Alpha Beta. But when they got there, she wasn’t allowed to run upstairs to Beth.

Jim hustled her out on the gloomy patio and imprisoned her on the love seat. He thought she owed him a fair measure of affection to recompense him for the evening’s entertainment. Laura’s aversion to him mounted higher with every kiss until it reached a screaming pitch inside her.

“Gee, Laura, I thought you were gonna be cold as hell,” he said. “You’re not, are you?” He chuckled at her.

Laura looked at him wide-eyed, held so hard that she felt she could count his ribs with her own. She hated him. She wanted to spit at him, hurt him, run. But she was afraid.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “You and I are gonna get along just fine, Laura. Just fine.” And he kissed her. “Just fine. Hey, open your mouth honey. Hey, come on, Laura.”

Laura turned away from him and whispered, “Jim, this is our first date. I mean—please, Jim.”

“I know, baby. You’re just a kid, you want to do everything right.” He tickled her neck. “Well, believe me, Laura, this is right.”

Laura’s nails bit cruelly into the heels of her hands in a frenzy of revolt. Oh God, stop! she thought.

“Hey, Laur, how ‘bout next week?” He waited. “You busy next week?”

She waited too long; she didn’t know how to make up excuses. She turned a helpless face to him.

“Good,” he said. “Let’s make it Friday.”

“Oh, but I—”

“I’ll give you a buzz.”

The merciful closing chime sounded, and she sat up straight in a spasm of relief. Jim pulled at her arm. “Hey, Laura, they don’t beat you if you kiss a boy, you know,” he said, laughing and pulling at her.

“Jim, it’s closing time,” she said sharply.

“You’re just nervous, baby,” he said with a grin. He got to his feet slowly. “Okay, I don’t want to make you a nervous wreck.” He pulled his jacket on. Laura wanted to yank it on and force him out the door with all the histrionic haste of an old movie. He got one more long wet kiss from her and then she saw him out the door with an audible sigh of relief.

Laura walked up the stairs feeling weak and miserable. Jim was a handsome boy. Emmy said he was popular, and she had another date with him. She ought to be happy. But for the first time a tiny doubt slipped into her mind. What do I want? she asked herself. But she was afraid to answer.

Emily caught up with her on the stairs and said, “Gee, Laur, Jim really likes you! I’m so glad. I thought for a while you two weren’t going to hit it off. When are you going to see him again?”

“Friday.” She wondered if Emily would notice her lack of enthusiasm….

Beth was still up. Laura felt a surge of affection for her.

“Hey, it’s past your bedtime,” said Emmy.

Beth looked up with a smile. “I wanted to hear about the date,” she said to Laura, and Laura had a sudden wild desire to throw herself into Beth’s arms and cry; to tell her, with all the violence at her command, what she thought of Jim. But she didn’t dare. She looked at Beth for a minute like a lost waif.

Beth smiled at her as if she understood. “How was it?” she said.

“Oh—very nice,” Laura said. Emily was watching her.

“Laura made quite a hit with Jim,” she told Beth, stripping off her clothes. Laura let her talk, wishing all the while that she would go away. She wanted to be alone with Beth; to talk, to be comforted.

Emmy kept them up for a while. Laura refused to go to bed until Emmy did, and finally she won the game. Emmy stood up and yawned.

“Guess I’ll hit the sack, you guys,” she said. “I’m beat to the bricks, as my friend Bud would say. See you in the morning.”

“Night, Em,” said Beth. She lighted a cigarette and settled back to gaze at Laura and when Laura could think of nothing to say, she walked over to the couch and sat down beside her.

“What’s the matter, honey?” she said.

“Oh, nothing!” The overemphasis rang false, and her head ached and Beth was so close to her that she was dizzy.

Beth put an arm around her. “Tell me the truth, Laur,” she said. And when Laura remained silent, she added gently, “It’s not a disaster if you didn’t like the boy, you know.”

Laura looked down at her lap, still mute, afraid her tears would start with her voice.

“What did he do, honey?”

“He—he— I don’t want to talk about it. It wasn’t anything awful. Emmy seemed to think it was all right. Only,—” her voice quavered—“I didn’t like it.” And suddenly she put her head down on Beth’s shoulder and wrapped her arms around her and let the tears come out. The pressure began to lessen a little.

Beth held her and rocked her in her arms. “You didn’t like it, baby?” she said softly.

“I hated it! I couldn’t help it.”

Beth smiled down at Laura’s back.

“Oh, Beth, I wish so much you had been with me instead of—of Emily.” She had been about to say, “Instead of Jim.” What a curious idea that was—to have a date with Beth!

Beth held her closer.

“I don’t ever want to see that boy again!” she said into Beth’s shoulder.

Beth broke the date for her.

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