Excerpt: Sex, The Book

Have you ever wondered why the Bible says Harry knew Sally and they begat Little Harry? Instead of Harry bonked Sally?

Actually, that’s not something I’ve wondered about either — until this morning. I woke up, and my brain was in the middle of solving a riddle that hadn’t interested me before, at least not consciously. It began with sex and worked its way backwards into the rest of my life.

Sounds like reality, doesn’t it?

. . .

Millie says that her first sex was with a fifty-two-year-old man... well, penetrating sex anyway. Millie grew up out in the country. I think there must be something in all that fresh air, something about the farm animals that gives a sort of healthy glow to sexual experimentation in a rural setting. Millie didn't believe me when I told her that I was divorced before I knew that masturbation was something that women could do, too.

"I don't believe that," she said. "I must have been four years old when my sister and I were sitting on the floor listening to Buffalo Bob on the radio and she said, 'Here, Millie, do this. It feels good.' So I tried it and she was right. It felt good. So after that it was something we did whenever we listened to Buffalo Bob... at least until Pops saw us. 'Irene, come and take care of your daughters,' he had shouted. After that, we only did it when we were playing camp-out under an old bedspread."

Millie was full of stories that made me wish I'd grown up in the country. Except for the one about Francine, Millie's high school friend who taught the entire tenth-grade female population about cunnilingus. They practiced on each other most of that night, Millie said. That was one of the times I didn't hang out with Millie for a couple of months. It all sounded so lesbian to me. I suppose, though, if I hadn't been lucky enough to have that sort of a husband and those sorts of lovers, maybe I would have been glad to have a Francine in my life. Some things are worth knowing, you know. There it is again, knowing... sex.

But I don't want to think about that right now. We were talking about Millie's first lover, the fifty-two-year-old pharmacist. Millie had won a beauty contest, Miss Podunk of 1956 -- or some such distant year. Of course, it wasn't really Podunk, but if I told you the name of the place, there might be someone still alive who could be hurt by it... you know, maybe grandchildren or something like that.

Anyway, Millie says she was pretty stuck on herself. She had long, pretty legs, she says, and nicely shaped -- but not really big -- bosoms. She was even vain about the color of her nipples. They were a pale rosy beige, she says. She describes them as if she were remembering her first puppy or something. Anyway, Millie lovingly described her eighteen-year-old body and how proud she was of it. "Mr. Fulton loved my body," Millie remembers. She always called him Mr. Fulton when she talked about him. I don't think she ever called him by his first name.

So Millie and Mr. Fulton found enough in common with their mutual admiration for Millie's body that they carried on for upwards of seven months as Millie remembers it -- and then she moved on. I was relieved to hear that she found heterosexual sex more satisfying than all-female slumber-party cunnilingus. I wasn't ready for our friendship to take any turns, if you know what I mean.

What happened to Millie is a little like what happened to Zack, I guess. She discovered hot, young bodies and the joy of variety. Mind you, I'm not saying I approve of a lot of sexual partners. I think there's more to be said against it than for it -- at least for women. But for Millie, who was in love with her own body and what it could do for her, it seemed just right at the time. So poor Willie Fulton, who had been seduced as much by his fear of ageing as by Millie's awakening power of her sexuality, went back to being the face behind the counter at the pharmacy, the vice president of the Rotary, and Podunk's Father of the Year for 1956 -- or some such distant year. His wife was probably happier after that. He bought a marriage manual, and he and Imogene went through it, picture by picture, trying out a few new things. And he pretended that he'd learned that special trick she liked so much from the book and not from Millie, who had learned it at a slumber party. At least that's the way I like to think it turned out.