Chapter 7

So, OK, I had a strong sense of ethics and knew what was right and what was wrong, and unlike Sally Gervais, it hadn't been Forever since I'd gotten laid. Also unlike Sally Gervais, I hadn't watched my horny parents copulating repeatedly on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific.

My parents had told me about the birds and the bees but my mother had never promised that, if I would be a good boy, she would someday take me to Hawaii or California and get me laid.

I knew all about Sally's emotional age. If I were to give in to her, I'd perhaps be committing some kind of emotional statutory rape. How old was she, really? In terms of worldly experience. Twelve? --Fourteen, maybe?

But now, here I was staring at the dark curls of her incredibly grown-up-looking thatch, there, And just as she had said, it was visibly wet with her fluids.

It was Nature's way of saying, "Come and get it!"

And so I began at long last the process of self-justification. Rationalization. She was after all, I reminded myself, a woman of legal age. She was, if anything, long overdue for the attentions of an able-bodied male. And here I was, the nearest and dearest able-bodied male she knew.

And, God knows, I wasn't going to be having a problem getting it up! It was already up. It had been up. Four hours? No, I didn't need immediate medical attention.

But I did need attention! If I wasn't going to deflower Sally, I'd damned well better go out in the hall and grab somebody off the housecleaning crew!

"Jesus, Sally! You're making this impossible!" I whined.

"What?" she said. She reached out with her forefinger and touched my erection right through my shorts. "What do you mean, 'impossible?' It looks like you're ready!"

"Don't pretend you don't understand what I've been talking about!" I said.

I mean, Sally was naïve in some ways, but she wasn't as naïve as she tried to appear. I knew some of this — maybe all of this — was contrivance on her part.

She was seducing me. It wasn't the toughest task any young woman ever undertook.

"I know that you are trying to behave in a way that is — virtuous," Sally said.

"Yes!"

"And I know it's hard for you." She laughed at her own unintentional pun. "It's very hard!" she said.

"All right then. So why are you tormenting me like this? It's not like you're never going to get to,,, to..."

"Fuck?" she said. "But I was supposed to come here almost four years ago!"

"Sure. But that's -- that's not my fault. I mean, things went wrong for your family, and..."

"Even when I was only seventeen, my mother understood," Sally said. "She knew that when we came back to the World, and I enrolled in college, my life would change."

"And it will!" I said with new enthusiasm. "It will change! Very soon! But not, y'know, today!"

Sally gave me a thoughtful frown. "You said I should not expect it -- to fuck -- on the very first day that I was back here in Hawaii."

"That's right."

"It's not."

"What?"

"It's not the very first day," she said. "Yesterday. Yesterday was the very first day. Now we have been back here for almost all of two days! And tomorrow we must fly to California!"

"People have sex in California," I said. Maybe she thought you had to be surrounded by water.

"Why did you come to get me?" she said.

Her shift of topic confused me momentarily. "Why did I come? Because I received the message you sent to my father. Somebody had to come to get you!"

"You could have hired somebody to come," she said. "You could have asked for advice, and found Mr. Houston or someone else, like him. You could have stayed in California. You could have just sent Mr. Houston to get me."

"Well, yeah. But I felt — responsible."

"How much about me did you know?" Sally asked.

"I knew a little. My dad had told us about you — my mother and me — years ago. I knew what your parents had done. My father used to worry about you, growing up out there in the middle of nowhere."

"You knew that now I was alone."

"Well. It sounded from your message like you were alone. But we hoped to find your father there with you."

"You hoped it. But you did not expect it!"

"The message wasn't clear."