Chapter 24

After dinner, we stayed with the family and socialized for a couple of hours before retiring to Tess' wing of the house once more. The three of us had a lot of privacy in this end of the house. There was, essentially, no reason for Tess' parents ever to find themselves in our hallway.

We reconvened in Tess' bedroom again, the three of us.

"So, where did the psychologist come in?" I asked Tess.

"I started seeing her when I was twelve. I was catching some attention from the boys, at school, and there had been a little incident, at the country club pool, where a slightly older boy had copped a little feel for himself. It wasn't anything all that awful, really, but I wasn't as old as I looked, and it was a little traumatic, I guess. That, combined with some negativity from the other girls at school -- again, because of my breasts -- and I was showing enough signs of having some problems that my mother set up an appointment for me with Dr. Bateman -- the shrink I mentioned earlier."

"I gather you didn't think a lot of this psychologist."

"Well, I think she was kind-of a bad choice. Maybe there weren't that many for my parents to pick from. My mother -- probably wisely -- thought I should be seeing a woman psychologist. I think the problem is, Dr. Bateman was, herself, as flat-chested as some of my twelve-year-old girlfriends at school who were making my life difficult."

"No empathy from her, huh?"

"Oh, she did the best she could, I guess, but, no. I didn't feel that we were exactly kindred spirits. And, eventually, when I opened up to her about the thing with Roy -- the peephole thing -- she just about started bouncing off the walls! She was determined to report Roy's conduct to our parents, and I had to just scream at her, and to keep insisting on the confidentiality of our sessions -- something that she had always promised me."

"She probably saw Roy as some sort of predator," Kim said. "After all, he was a little older."

"He was only fourteen!" Tess said. "And what he was doing was... harmless. At least, I thought it was harmless. It wasn't something that I even felt bad about. Hell, let's face it -- I liked it!"

"Did you tell her -- the shrink -- that you got off on it -- literally?" I asked Tess.

"No. I didn't. I never trusted her enough to tell her something like that. But I admitted to her that I sometimes... cooperated with Roy's voyeurism, by letting him see me undress, and stuff like that."

"You know, Tess, just to give this Dr. Whoszits her due, you were putting her in a pretty difficult situation. I can see where she'd be in a real quandary -- can't you? After all, she might well have regarded it as her duty to protect you, by speaking up, to the adults, about Roy's conduct."

"Maybe so," Tess admitted, "but the way I saw it, her assigned job was to help me with my relationships at school, and with dealing with other people in public places. I didn't have any complaints, for her, about what Roy was doing!"

"So, how did it end -- with her?"

"She kept focusing on Roy. I think it was like you said -- she figured him for a predator, no matter what I told her about it. She was worried, probably, about incest. I kept telling her, Roy never touched me -- not once! Our relationship wasn't like that.

"Finally, I just told my folks that I thought we -- me and Dr. Bateman -- had covered the necessary ground, and that I was feeling better able to cope with my own social problems. They questioned me pretty closely, but finally they let me have my way on it.

"I was relieved," Tess said, "because about that same time, the voyeurism/exhibitionism games that Roy and I were playing had moved into a new phase -- a much more exciting one."

"Hooo, boy!" I said. "The plot thickens."

"Wait a minute," Kim said. "You said 'the games' you and Roy were playing... Does that mean that, by this time, you and Roy... knew about each other?"

"I could almost never be certain, at any given time, whether Roy was watching me," Tess replied. "Once in awhile, I'd hear something, and get a stronger hint that, probably, he was there -- at one of the peepholes. But most of the time, all I knew for sure was that he was in his room.

"But Roy wasn't stupid. I think after awhile, if he was watching frequently, he'd have had to figure out that I was... putting on a show. I mean, how else could he have accounted for the change, between the way I'd acted, earlier, and the much more blatant behavior he was seeing, now?"

"But the two of you never talked about it? Not at all?"

"Oh, no! And I never did anything so -- so obvious that Roy was compelled to acknowledge that I knew I was being watched... Don't you see? If I had, that would have spoiled it! Probably for both of us. It was one thing for Roy to maybe suspect that I knew about the peepholes, but I was giving him -- what do the politicians call it?... I was giving him deniability. We could keep everything normal between us, on the day-to-day level. And we did!

"Since I tried to never let on that I knew anything at all, Roy -- maybe -- wasn't ever certain. Anyway, whether he knew that I knew or not, it didn't stop him from... escalating."

"How do you mean?" I asked.

"He started bringing friends over. Other boys."

"To his room, you mean?"

"Yeah. Probably, he just had some friend over on a routine visit at some point, and then Roy realized that I had gone into my room. Maybe he saw me coming in from the pool, or something. I don't know -- I'm just guessing, here. Anyway, maybe Roy was feeling frisky that day, and he says to his friend, 'Hey, you want to see my sister, naked?'"

I laughed. "... And Roy's little friend says, 'You mean your juicy little sister with the humongous boobs? That sister?... Oh, no, thanks.'"

Tess, to her credit, laughed with me. "It's all speculation, but one thing about the activity next door, it was a whole lot easier to detect, after other boy got involved! The other kid wasn't accustomed to the need for complete silence. He was clumsy and unfamiliar with the two peeping-stations that Roy had so carefully set up. To put it mildly, I could hear them coming."

"You could probably hear them cumming, too!" I cracked.

"You think that's funny, but I did hear a few moans, in there, a couple of times," Tess said.

"So. Did this -- escalation thing -- did that make you angry?" Kim asked.

"No! That's the really perverse part! It made me much hotter! Much more eager to play the game. First of all, the introduction of another boy was noisier, so I no longer had to just wonder whether I had an audience or not. I knew that I did. I had two -- and, later, three boys over there, watching me! That was almost overwhelmingly exciting!"

"Three! Jesus!"

"Well, only two, at any one moment, as far as I've ever been able to establish," Tess said, "but there were a couple of times when Roy and two of his best buddies were all three in there, sharing the two peepholes."

"That's incredible!" Kim said. "And you went along with this -- for how long?"

"Kim, I didn't just go along with it. I loved it! I got where I almost lived for it! Don't you see? Those eyes, focused on me, desperately hoping to see something forbidden! And I knew they probably were over there, with their little cocks in their hands, pumping away the whole time. Oh, it was wild, for me! I would have those... those spontaneous orgasms I told you about -- literally without touching myself.

"But, other times, I would touch myself, too! I'd masturbate, openly, where I knew they had ringside seats. I was a regular one-girl porno show for them!"

I was still fascinated by the fact that Tess had never discussed any of this with Roy. "Later, though, Tess -- like, when you went off to college? Even then, you never discussed this with Roy?"

"Never. I was tempted, sometimes. But he knew. He had to know. I mean, I probably wasn't the only girl or woman those boys ever peeped at. I gather that voyeurism, among adolescent boys, is practically an epidemic disease... Don't you know they probably spent hours, seeing practically nothing, to get the occasional fleeting glance at some neighbor woman, walking past her window nude, or something?

"... But, in my case? All they had to do was troop into Roy's bedroom, lock the door, and hit the peepholes, and, presto, the show would start in five minutes! You don't think Roy could figure that out, after awhile?"

"It's truly odd," I said, "both of you knowing it -- for years, I gather? And neither of you ever admitting to anything."

"It went on for years -- although, when we got older -- later in our teens -- there was some decline in the frequency. And Roy did stop inviting other boys over. I think he got the guilts, after awhile, about doing that."

"But you... never stopped -- accommodating him?"

"No. No, I didn't. Do you think that was awful? Harmful, somehow?"

"I don't think it was awful, no, Babe. But harmful? Maybe. I mean, face it, Tess, you haven't got just an exhibitionist streak -- you've got a two-foot exhibitionist stripe down your back, head to toe!"

"But. How is it harmful? I don't hurt anybody with it."

"On the contrary," I said, laughing in spite of myself, "you bring a lot of joy to the peoples of the world in your immediate vicinity."

"But -- it's not as simple as that," Kim said.

"That's right, that's right!" I said, a little ashamed of my frivolity. "Forget about doing anybody else any harm, Tess. I don't think you're doing that. It's just like you told me, that time long ago. You're not flashing little kids on a playground somewhere!

"But you could be doing yourself harm -- serious harm. Look at where you are now, in your career. You're one of the leading money winners on the LPGA Tour! You're liable to finish this year with over a million in prize money! With your face and figure, combined with that incredible golf game, you're becoming nationally known! You're on your way to being a celebrity!

"Don't you see, Tess? That changes the equation drastically! I mean, think about it!... Some girl, down the street from here, maybe she works as a... as a bank teller, downtown. Her boyfriend can post naked pictures of her on the Internet, and, at the worst, the girl gets embarrassed, if her parents find out about it, or if some bank customer recognizes her in the pictures.

"But -- you! If you do something that's considered too out of the ordinary -- too blatantly sexy -- it could put a huge damper on your career as a pro athlete!"

"And, even at best," Kim said, "it could cause you to start having very poor relations with other LPGA Tour professionals. It would be painful, Tess, to allow yourself to become identified with -- public exhibitionism."

"I can see what you're saying," Tess said, "and I can't disagree with you. But I know you both already understand, this is something of a... a compulsion -- for me. And 'compulsion' doesn't even really cover it, guys. It's a... it's like a need!"

So, Tess had come clean with us and had begun to explain why she behaved, sometimes, in inappropriate ways. The story wasn't a complete shock, by any means. I had always assumed that something in Tess' childhood had triggered her impulses. I had even been afraid that, perhaps, overt childhood sexual abuse had been at the root of the problem.

I couldn't really think in those terms, though, about what Roy, Junior had done. First of all, I knew that, if I had been in Roy's shoes, I'd have done the same damned thing -- or maybe something worse. I figured my two little sisters were lucky that I had been six years their senior, and living away from home by the time they had become the nubile little minxes they now were.

Anyway, Tess' story wasn't really about anything that Roy had done. It was about what she had done. All Roy had done was to trigger it. The impulse must have already been there.

Hell, it was still there.

Maybe, now that Tess had come out into the open about it with Kim and me, we could help her to deal with it more effectively. As soon as possible, I wanted to have a discussion with Kim, about what we should try to do.

Soon our post-U.S. Open leisure days were over, and we were back on the golf course, preparing for the Match Play event coming up in New York state. I had never seen Tess, or Kim, competing in match play, on other than an informal basis. Both women, however, really enjoyed doing so. It seemed that most competitive golfers liked the match play format.

In match play, overall scores for a round are disregarded, and players compete head to head. The match is for 18 holes, but the object is to "win" individual holes by beating one's opponent's score for that hole. If, for example, Tess were to play Kim and score a birdie on the first hole (while Kim got only a par), Tess would be "one up" for the match. As the game progressed, the running tally would inform spectators how the match was going.