The Eleventh Virgin, Dorothy Day [best e book reader for android TXT] 📗

“If I had followed your line of reasoning,” June told Hugh indignantly, “I should have lost my virtue at the age of twelve. I was far more conscious of sex at that time (and once again a few years later) than I ever have been since. And that was because I knew nothing about it. It was a thing that wasn’t mentioned in polite society. Radicals are so free in their discussions and I’ve heard so much about sex that it loses in importance the more I learn. It’s no longer a temptation to indulge desire. It isn’t forbidden. You speak of it as a supremely right thing to do⁠—to take a lover or as many lovers as you want. It is, but it isn’t heroic. I shouldn’t feel brave and untrammeled and all that if I went in for lovers. Just because it isn’t forbidden. We can’t think about society and the condemnation of society because we don’t live in it. Look at the people I know, the people I came in contact with on the Clarion and the people I meet around the Flame. Anything short of absolute promiscuity is disregarded as long as you can speak of sexual relationships as love affairs.

“When they gossip you hear them say, ‘Have you heard the latest? Beatrice has left Charlie, or do you think he left her? And now she’s living with Bertram. I wonder how long it will last.⁠—Oh, wasn’t she the one who lived with Jim Albright for three years?’

“Or if you mention the name of some woman, somebody immediately speaks up⁠—‘Who is she living with now?’

“Oh, I wish I could meet someone who would tempt me very insidiously to give up my virtue, persuading me to wickedness that was lovely just because it was wickedness!”

Hugh was a subtle antagonist and usually June could find nothing to say to his arguments. She could not even take the attitude of Daniel who held up purity as an ideal with almost Biblical fervor. He talked as she had heard Ellen talk many times. Even if she had wished to combat Daniel’s arguments, she could not have done so, for logic was not one of her gifts. From her knowledge of it (confined to Jevon’s handbook) she was inclined to think that reason predominated on the side of Hugh. It was hard to find where instinct came in.

Hugh’s premise was that virginity was a state of dishonesty and it was only by living in a state of unreality that virginity continued.

June could only say that she was sure she was an honest person and that she had always faced reality.

“What you mean by facing reality,” Hugh told her, “is facing the more intellectual discussion of sex. As a matter of fact you are an utter coward when it comes to acknowledging your own feelings and the recognition of their importance in your life.”

June could only repeat what she had said before, that she had had no “feelings” since she was fifteen.

Whereupon Hugh regarded her lithe young body for several seconds and then gave a supercilious snort.

“You make me furious with your pose of cool indifference; I know you’re an exotic person. Don’t you suppose my feelings tell me something? It isn’t that I want you⁠—”

“Now you’re lying,” she caught him up quickly. “Even if I’m not seething with feelings of suppressed sex, I can recognize different forms of approach. The poetical, the primitive, the psychic, the intellectual and your combination of them which I can only call logical. But I must say that I like the simpler forms better. They at least allow of some illusion.”

That summer, similar conversations took place just as often in public with Daniel and Kenneth Graves (the business manager) as listeners, as in private. And June was delighted at the opportunity to point out to him, with her newfound knowledge of Freudian theories that he was something of an exhibitionist in his lovemaking. Or as one jealous rival put it in a moment of irritation, Hugh’s love encounters should really take place on the stage of the Hippodrome before a packed house.

During these discussions, Kenneth would sit curled up on a sofa, drawing consolation from the stem of a wet briar, making noises which were at first irritating to June, and which afterwards she associated with a singing teakettle or a purring cat. Although he was inarticulate, he managed to convey his appreciation of what was being said by a few rumbled words which nobody understood or paid any attention to. Somehow, in his person he reflected New England and was a thoroughly good young man. Without in any way modifying his own ideas or his life to conform to the ideas of those around him, he was tolerant and appreciative of his friends.

June’s intimacy with those three grew from a suggestion made by Hugh at the close of that picnic day, a suggestion prompted by a view to economy.

“You cannot possibly live and clothe yourself on ten dollars a week,” Hugh told her thoughtfully. “Besides a salary of such dimensions savours of capitalistic exploitation. Daniel and Kenneth and I, as you probably know, have rented a furnished apartment from a friend of ours for the summer at practically nothing so as to keep down our own expenses. And we’ve decided that the only thing lacking around there is a woman. Kenneth sleeps on a couch in the dining-room and Daniel and I have separate couches in the living-room. Besides a kitchen, there is a big hall bedroom which is quite unnecessary, so why don’t you come down and live there? Your only responsibilities, my dear, will be to be silent in the morning and fairly agreeable in the evening. We’ll all take turns at cooking and bed-making, Yes, even the dish-washing.”

This was the beginning of the “ménage au quatre” which miraculously worked from inception and was their boast to friends and even acquaintances. Hugh’s theoretical lovemaking,