She had sat on the couch, Jackie in front of her and Maureen at her side, and perched in anticipation, waiting for one of the other women to say something. But Jackie went back to her work and Maureen smiled at her silently. Finally, growing a bit uneasy, she had made some pleasantry about the house, and was taken aback when Jackie looked up suddenly and said, 'Do you know why you came here?'
To her own surprise Cynthia bypassed her reflexive response, an impulse to ask, 'What do you mean?' and answered the question directly. 'I was lonely and you sounded very friendly.' She paused. 'And interesting,' she added.
'That's because I was seducing you,' Jackie told her.
'I thought of that,' Cynthia replied.
'And you came anyway?'
'I don't know what any of this is about, but I'm curious, and I don't think that you'll do anything to hurt me.'
Jackie nodded. 'You're an honest woman,' she said. 'I don't want you to have any misconceptions about our intentions. You have a lovely body and a potentially exciting mind, and we no longer care about relationships which involve one and not the other.'
'And my emotions?' Cynthia asked, finding the words flowing easily from her mouth, experiencing an immediate rapport with the tenor of the talk.
'We are women,' Maureen cut in, 'we have the same feelings.'
Cynthia relaxed into a pleasant tingling; no sense of urgency tugged at her. She could not help but contrast the state with parallel situations she had experienced with men who wanted to fuck her, and the way, no matter how sophisticated they were, all their words and actions were covered with thin beads of sweat. It was the first time in her life that someone was making a sexual overture by appealing to her intelligence, and the experience was exhilarating. The conversation had gone very quickly into areas of intimacy and politics, tumbling almost at once into the question of the lesbian adjustment to the sexual problem.
'You've been to only two meetings,' Jackie said when the record ended, 'but that should have given you enough evidence to see that the whole question of women's liberation can't be understood unless you face the issue of sex between women fully. If we attain all the economic equality and political rights we ask for, they mean nothing if at the end of each day we return to a position of serfdom in relation to some man. And I have absolutely no doubts left about the fact that only in learning to love a woman can a woman put her relationship with men into any kind of real perspective.' She inclined her head toward Maureen. 'We saw you at the first meeting, and were struck by some quality about you that made us curious, more than just wanting to have sex with you. And at the next meeting I approached you to learn more. It was clear that you were at a stage of dissatisfaction in your personal life that was leading you to explore new possibilities. Most of the women who go to those meetings are at that level. And we were a bit apprehensive that you might be snared by one of the political crazies and end up running a mimeograph machine or organising marches/ She waved her hand. 'Not that I mean to put down those functions, they are unquestionably necessary. But they should be attended to by people whose nature predisposes them for drone activity. I think you have the capacity to bypass many of those stages and come directly to the heart of things. The true revolution lies in the mutation of consciousness that takes place in individuals, and for a woman - as for a man - that quest must bring her, sooner or later, to the limits she places on her definition of her own sexuality.'
'You know,' said Cynthia, 'it's never even occurred to me, in my wildest dreams, to have sex with a woman. It's not that the idea repulses me or anything, but I have no impulses in that area.'
'Then consider it,' Maureen said, folding one leg over the other, the motion as silky as the closing of a fan.
Cynthia's expression was somewhere between a laugh and a mild protest. 'But do you mean you want to go to bed with me?' she asked. 'Just like that?'
'Only in the interests of the Movement,' Jackie said and laughed, a high pealing sound that felt like fingers tickling Cynthia's brain.
'Even if I wanted to,' Cynthia replied, 'why should you be interested? I'm totally inexperienced. What attraction can I possibly hold for you?'
Maureen leaned over and put one hand on Cynthia's arm. The touch was a static caress, suggesting everything but insinuating nothing. 'Look at how beautiful you are,' she said. 'That's reason enough.' Cynthia turned toward her and Maureen went on. 'And we are sincerely interested in helping you. Each of us has struggled, as you now are doing, to make sense of the confusions that wear you down.'
'Have you known each other long?' Cynthia asked, the intonation shaping the question to mean, 'Have you been lovers long?' In addition to the effect they were having upon her directly, she was also taken by watching the balance between them. They rarely communicated to one another directly through words, and yet she had the sense of their constant mutual inclusiveness, as though they were wrapped in a constant embrace which was all the more powerful for not being visible to gross perception.
'I was an exchange student at the university seven years ago,' Maureen said. 'Jackie was a doctoral candidate in psychology. We met at a recital by Bismillah Khan, began talking about the parallels between Jung's thought and Eastern religion, began to like one another very much, and within a few months took an apartment together. We were still naive although we had a very high estimation of our intelligence. We had our separate affairs, and consoled one another for our troubles with men. Then a friend of Jackie's, a chemist, gave us some LSD he had synthesised, and we took our first trip. And that blew the cover off everything. We saw that what we took as superficial frustrations were the tip of the iceberg of human stultification in our society, and the problems we had with sex, which we had been sweeping under the rubric of "well, that's just the way things are," were an indication of how crippled we were. Like you, we began going to meetings, and joined in the strident caterwauling that so many of our sisters still, unfortunately, find necessary to maintain their courage.' She stopped, curved her spine and flexed her neck, giving the impression of a cobra unfolding its hood. 'We became deeply involved in activist extroversion, and it was killing us because we are both basically inner-oriented people. Then one night, after a particularly gruesome day, we were lying in our living room, talking, trying to relieve one another of our confusion, when in the middle of a sentence something popped inside me, there was a tear in the veil that had been covering my eyes, and I saw that none of the rest of it mattered, that the woman who was lying before me was the dearest thing to me in the world, and I had been running around looking everywhere for what was in my very home all the while. A strange force filled me and without a word I slid forward, took her in my arms, and kissed her with all the passion of which I am capable.
'We made love all that night, and since then I haven't been unclear about who I am or what things mean.'
'A few months after that,' Jackie added, 'almost like a blessing, my father died. I had been living on an allowance from him for years, and in his will he left me his entire fortune. I bought this place and we have been spared the necessity of working at jobs that would make us tedious.'
Cynthia realised that she had been holding her breath through the whole narrative. She relaxed her chest and looked from one to the other. 'It's very beautiful,' she said, 'and you're both lucky. But why can't you just enjoy what you've found? Why do you drag in all the politics and get involved in a cause, especially when you look down on that sort of activity?' Cynthia voiced questions which she hoped would not give offence. She had come, in a short time, to enjoy their company immensely. There was something about their complete assurance about their roles in life that she envied, and wanted to explore that without, on the one hand being intrusive, or on the other hand seeming to promise that she would acquiesce in their desire for her. She tested her feelings and found that she was without prejudice. She could imagine Maureen's lips on hers, and the notion was faintly exciting, but not in the least compelling.
Jackie pointed to the library. 'There are a dozen books I could recommend offhand to deal with that issue,' she said. 'If you're interested I'll lend a few to you. They all deal with the connections between economic and psychological realities. But that's all in the realm of theory and has no meaning until one has had the experience with which to weigh the ideas. We have been lucky, as you say, but most people aren't, and we couldn't enjoy what we have if we didn't work to teach others what we know.'
That's the most altruistic rationalisation for a seduction I have ever heard in my life,' Cynthia said.
'We're experts,' Maureen said simply. 'Why pretend to fumble?'
'And if you share our bed, there will be more than enough heavy breathing and salivating. Right now we only want to bring you to a rational choice, so that in the middle of a tangle of limbs you don't sit up suddenly filled with doubts as to what you're doing.'
Maureen removed her hand from Cynthia's arm and the loss of contact underscored how gentle and unobtrusive, but continually present, the touch had been. 'Sex is a choice one makes,' she said. 'Once the conditions are favourable, one says yes or no. Seduction is a game that allows us to pass the time while the voice deep inside you makes up its mind. It doesn't matter what you think up to the moment of action; it's the action you choose that counts. Our liaisons are picked for us by forces of which we have little knowledge, and we need only to recognise them, and then accept or reject them. Your will is free, but what it is given to act upon has been determined.
'I can accept what you're saying, but none of it makes me feel sexy,' Cynthia said.
'That's because you still think of sexiness as that conglomerate of feelings that arise when your desire is roused by a male in heat. The biological potency of that kind of energy is undeniable, and it has a specific purpose to insure that the species is propagated. But it is
only one mode'
Maureen leaned forward, took a long flat cigarette from the coffee table, and lit it deliberately with a purple-stemmed match. Cynthia watched, the way a cat will observe a fluttering moth, and only broke her gaze when she spoke again. 'With a woman sexuality is continuous with sensuality. We tend to forget that after so many brutalising experiences with men whose passion ends abruptly at the ejaculation of sperm.' Cynthia thought of Aaron's actions that morning and stirred uneasily. 'When you are sensitive to yourself, you are sexual in everything you do, because you are alive to your senses, to the vibrant qualities of your body. As women we have one sexual duty, to produce children. But once that function has either been discharged or declined, our sexuality becomes a different thing entirely. Jackie and I have already made love to you, and have been doing so since you walked in. We have been touching you with our eyes and ears and words and gestures and intentions. If you see that, and acknowledge it, then taking off your clothes and fucking - if I may use that word for lack of a better - is merely a continuation of the process.'
'Why need it come to that?' Cynthia asked.
'It doesn't have to,' Jackie replied. 'It's just what happens next. I might turn the question around and ask, "Why, at the very point when two women are at almost total closeness, do they arbitrarily draw the line at physical contact?" '
Maureen blew out a cloud of smoke. 'Have you ever wondered,' she said, her words widely spaced, 'why men seem to derive such pleasure from licking a woman's cunt?'
Cynthia twitched involuntarily, the question catching her up short with its graphic power. Her first memory was of Aaron, his tongue lapping the walls of her cunt, his lips sucking greedily at the opening, smacking sounds arising from between her thighs. She could feel the bristle on his cheeks scratching her skin, and his teeth nibbling her clitoris. It was always very exciting for her, but never fully satisfying. She found that in the midst of her revery she had come to look full into Maureen's eyes. She was caught in the woman's gaze, her ego momentarily losing control and flying into the vortex of Maureen's power. It was as though she could look into her mind.
'It is the cunt which attracts them,' Maureen went on, 'it's smell and taste and mystery and texture. Have you ever been that close to a cunt?'
Cynthia was snapped out of her trance by the realisation that a question had been asked. 'I've examined myself in a mirror,' she said.
'But that isn't the same,' Maureen said. 'You miss the pulsation, you get to know nothing of how it moves and changes, of how it can be the smallest, most precious bud, and in the next instant swell to a cavernous mouth that threatens to engulf you. Most importantly, you get to know nothing of what it feels like to have a woman surrender her centre to you, to give her most tender opening to your tongue and teeth and lips and fingers. You have known that only vicariously, through the activities of the men who have flung themselves between your legs, but never directly.'
Cynthia felt the dampness between her buttocks and became sharply aware of the fact that her cunt bulged against the seam of her shorts, that only a thin layer of cloth kept it from access. She experienced an odd sense of nakedness, as though the women talking to her knew her anatomy and its responses better than any man she had ever known without ever having seen her nude. She realised she was very close to some kind of crisis.
'And even in the role you have experienced, as recipient, you haven't known your responses in their fullness. Until you have had a woman there, doing with a sensitivity born of self-knowledge what a man can only do through laboured practice . . . well, you have not the beginning of an idea of how glorious that can be. For who can know the nature of a cunt better than a woman?'