Me & Georgia
“Thanks,” Charlotte said Sunday night “for keeping my little sister company, and giving her a good time.”
I hadn't realized that was what I was doing—it hadn't seemed like that.
But then Charlotte wasn't there. Charlotte doesn't know. Charlotte knows only that her sister didn't come in until 7 in the morning, and until some early hour like that the morning before. I guess that's “giving a good time,” alright.
And my own impressions—no, feelings—are rather uncertain. I don't quite know what has happened. We had a touch: what will it mean? Was it too much willfulness on our parts—so it seemed to me after Friday night, to an extent. Despite the seriousness of the kisses—or rather the total seriousless abandon of them—somehow I couldn't find myself being drawn in completely enough—like I was touch, but wasn't touching, quite enough. I remained too conscious, and I knew it. And yet, I let myself go, I lent myself completely to touch, and didn't really feel touch, nor that I was really touching. Yet it seemed to me that Georgia, in the way she seemed to close her eyes and be quite abandoned in kisses, really was taken. And yet, it all centered around the face, the arms, and not the rest of the body.
Somehow, after all was done, it seemed to me it was all willful, rather than spontaneous, on my part, or on hers. That was Friday night / rather Saturday morning.
Yet I was certainly attracted, was certainly delighting in her. Because as it got towards morning I seemed to lose my conscious awareness of her, my resistance. I would guess, too, that she began to lose her resistance, for she had clearly wanted touch to center on the face and arms, not elsewhere, as I realized later. And so her answer to my, I admit, conscious, willful desire to pull down the zipper of her dress-suit, to expose her breasts. I made to ask if I should unzip it—and she indicated no. (We were after all, on the side of a gradual hiss, of leaves, in a park, with a highway on one side, a road on the other.)
And yet later, less willfully perhaps it seems to me, just that happened. And I uncovered her breast, and her neck, and her shoulder, so that my hand could feel from neck to shoulder to breast, and so accomplish what kissing alone could not seem to: touch. And with my lips I did what my hands had done, and I tugged at her breast-tit, like a carefree baby, and light had come into the sky, and it was morning. Yet we lingered, especially I, having, I think, lost much of my willfulness. She had a but to catch at 3. We never did finish our ice cream, and it was cold, but the ice cream had melted, with only a few lumps.
Skip to Saturday night.
As we headed from Ken's dorm room toward Rutherford, I knew she wanted to stop, sit somewhere, kiss like the night before, and I really didn't want to. I didn't know what I wanted—I wanted talk, not physical touch, willful physical touch, which it seemed to me, had been the cause of the night/morning before. So we walked, talking. Finally, we began to approach Rutherford, where the party still (or rather, the bridge game, that constituted the party) still lingered on, even at 3 in the morning. Slower and slower, Georgia wanted to walk, as we approached the dorm, and when I impulsively stopped a second to read the poster at the bus-stop shelter, with seats inside, she even more began to try to linger, hoping without doubt we would sit there—whereas I knew if we sat there, we would kiss, and I didn't want it, didn't feel like it.
But I wanted to keep on walking, and thought of an excuse to do so, head off in a new direction. Instead, as if neither of us had noticed, we merely followed the sidewalk along its bend, never crossing the street to Rutherford. And so we went up, to the high grounds of our campus, and out to that old wooden bridge, that seems to end, at night, in sheer drop. Georgia didn't like the bridge, really, and neither, really, did I, and glad I was not to have to worry about kissing on the bridge—besides, cars came beneath, and their lights blinded. So we left the bridge, and walked on a sidewalk that circled round, and found ourselves going back the way we had come. So I offered to show her north campus, where two greens were, and the law building.
And so down, down, down the steps, from high ground to low, across the bridge, and up again, climbing to north campus.
And I took her up the steps of the Administration building, because it was such a strange architecture, and took her to the two balconies, where the tables and love-seats were, and we didn't sit down, but whether she had hoped to, I don't know. I didn't want to. I don't like chairs, or kissing in a sitting position, because it is all heads, and a funny angle. So down again and out we went, all the time talking, I guess, with perhaps some silences. And out the gate, and by the iron fence, and she was getting tired of walking. “Perhaps,” I suggested, “we could sit in the grass somewhere,” and she could rest. And I knew it was what she wanted. And I was ready for it again, and wanted it too, since we had talked.
So we took a tree, as much as possible in shadow, and put our arms around each other without much delay, and kissed, and found a comfortable lying position. But it was all much, much less willful, this time. Spontaneous. I was much more non-conscious. I didn't have to talk and talk, spewing out strange, absurd phrases, in order to supplement our physical touching, in attempt to make the touch. It wasn't—apparently—necessary.
We were so much more silent and genuine: it was touch. I held my hand to her neck, feeling the soft vulnerability of her neck, and it was touch. Still, I won't say that it was complete touch, that our trust in each other was complete, that we held back nothing. But it was much, much more sincere, trusting, than the night before.
And as we made that long, slow, hour-long walk back—there! between trees and building, I saw the sliver moon. Thin, sliver crescent, and facing toward Lucifer, the Morning Star. It was just a light tincture of blueness for a sky, and soft crescent of moon, just barely new, and the Morning Star in junction with it.
And I knew, seeing it, it caught how it was, with us. A thin crescent of a moon—a possible beginning.
But, there are repercussions. There are doubts.
We've made our touch, and it is important that we don't, once we are able to think about it, find ourselves unwittingly denying it.
I kept Charlotte's little sister company, and gave her a good time—my good deed for the week. And so denial that it was anything more: say, a touch.
For touch is cheap, is everyday, and should not be taken too seriously—except by the immature.
But like Peter—I say, give me the immature, and not the mature. I'm tired of maturity; since it denies touch, and even, touches.
So I will not be afraid of admitting, it was a touch I had with Georgia. I'm not going to become defensive, and allow myself to deny it, thus mentally destroy my experience—and hers too.
But one doesn't want to sound immature, or too innocent—for no one else (the myth goes) among young people today, is.
At the same time, I do have uncertainties and doubts—definite ones—as to whether Georgia is a girl I should make too final a touch with. For one thing—I hardly “know” her. More seriously, she is not of my philosophy, and whether or not it is one she could come to understand—I can't say. She is not familiar, say, with D. H. Lawrence.
But she seems capable of sincere, silent, physical touch, and a little afraid. She does not sting, for all her intelligence. I hope to God I don't sting her.
I will call on Pan, and Isis, and Osiris, for what to do.
But I can't deny touch. That makes me a stinger. Yet again, I mustn't deceive her into too much touch, and trap myself.
So somehow I will try to write her a letter, that straddles some log in the middle, and lets her know the touch was genuine, and I won't, verbally, act in fear of it; and also, that we must neither of us be hurt—nor be afraid—if one of us cannot accept the final touch.
Why is it dragonflies don't have the problems of people? The circumstances they live in, it must be, haven't been destroyed into perversity.
