Unravelling Oliver(8)
4. Oliver
When I left school, women were a complete mystery to me – at least until I met Laura Condell. I had been in the sole company of priests and boys as a boarder in St Finian’s since I was six years old, and apart from one summer on Stanley Connolly’s farm, where, quite frankly, his three feline sisters terrified me, I had no experience of women. Apparently, you are supposed to learn the facts of life and the etiquette of how to treat women from your mother, or, failing that, your father. I learned instead by osmosis.
Particular magazines, carefully camouflaged in parcels containing biscuit tins or woollen jumpers, were passed among the boys of St Finian’s and treated as hard currency. The source was usually a boy’s English cousin or foreign friend. My time with the magazines was severely limited due to my financially straitened circumstances. Not having much bargaining power, I did not get many chances to assess their content. I was naturally aroused and very curious about these images, the slender legs, the soft look of their breasts, and the beautiful curve of the hip from buttocks to waist.
When I eventually got to see the real thing, I was not too disappointed. The women in the magazines in those days were not very unlike their actual counterparts. I think modern pornography is probably the single biggest cause of erectile dysfunction. How else is a poor teenager to react when he finally gets to grips with an un-depilated female body that is unlikely to have globe-shaped breasts standing to attention, a tiny waist and a bronzed oily sheen that he might think would help to slide himself inside her? The disillusionment with the reality must have a physical effect. Of course, now they can take a pill for that. I never needed such assistance.
I was, naturally, interested in sex, but I regarded boys with girlfriends as rather suspicious. Apart from sex, what would one want with a girl?
I knew, partly from a purple-faced biology teacher and partly from filthy innuendo disseminated by the other boys, that women bled regularly, and it seemed disgusting to me. Alien. I made it clear to Alice throughout our marriage that I did not want to know of cycles or bleeding or cysts or discharges or any of the other revolting paraphernalia that seems to come with the gender, and to be fair to her, she has left me untroubled by it all. A monthly ‘headache’ is tolerable to me, and if she had to go into hospital for a little ‘procedure’ now and then, what of it? Dear Alice.
At a school dance in the winter of my last year of school, I managed to shove my tongue into a girl’s mouth. Word had it that she’d let you ride her if you bought her a lemonade. Two boys had claimed success by this method. Later, outside on the bonnet of Purple-Face’s car, while couples danced inside to Dana’s ‘All Kinds of Everything’, my hands first encountered female breasts; ‘boozums’, as they were known in the school patois. She made it difficult for me. I was forced to beg. How curiously yielding they were, falling around my desperate fingers; without their upholstery, pendulous and weighty. She allowed me to kiss them and suddenly it all became deadly serious and I tried to concentrate on my breathing to prevent the impending climax in my unfashionable trousers, but as my hands began to wander southwards, she prissily slapped me away with the, I suspect, well-rehearsed line: ‘A girl has to draw the line somewhere and my line is drawn around my waist.’
She pushed me away from her and reorganized her bra and vest and shirt and sweater and coat (it was winter), and I felt upset and confused and tried to kiss her again and get her to reconsider, but she complained it was cold and walked back into the hormone-drenched hall. I wanted to follow her and to apologize, but I was not sure what I had done wrong, just that she had made me feel wrong, and bad. Not knowing what else to do, I burst into tears and masturbated and cursed the little cow, and felt better. My first pre-sexual sexual encounter. I should have reckoned with the braggadocio of the schoolboy. It was clear to me that nobody had ever broached her second line of defence.
A year later, when I first started having sexual relationships with the girls in college, I was far more successful. While the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s had somehow just bypassed Ireland, in 1971 there were enough girls around campus with the curiosity and education to know that they also were entitled to orgasm. They were ready to do the things they’d read about. I followed the American tradition of hitting the four bases in order. I think I was unusual in that I almost always got to fourth base, and this certainly quickly boosted my confidence. Some of the other fellows subtly asked for advice, cloaking the request in jokey banter, but there was no secret.
I have learned over the years how to charm them. It’s not too hard if you are handsome and can appear to be clever with a dry wit. Act as if you haven’t noticed them. Then, gradually, begin to take an interest, as if she is a specimen in a laboratory. Poke her a bit with a long stick while keeping your distance. Ignore her for long periods to see how she reacts and then give her a good shake. It almost always works.
In college, I dated girls until they yielded, but usually dropped them when they began to ask questions about my background or my family. My reputation was one of a mysterious loner, and women, being naturally nosey, all thought they could get to the bottom of it. Perhaps they all thought they could mother me? As I did not have a mother, it was all meaningless to me. I fell into a pattern: pursue, claim, conquer, move on. It amazed me how women would try to possess me as soon as we’d slept together, as if I owed them a part of me. I had never had women in my life, and I simply did not know what to do with them. One girl, who I left snivelling in her pre-dawn bed, threw a mug at my head and called me a ‘bastard’. I took my revenge by sleeping with her twin sister the following night.