Beebo Brinker Chronicles 1 - Odd Girl Out Read Online Free PDF Page A

to play games.” She eyed Laura over her coffee cup and made her feel illogically guilty.
    "Maybe she's afraid of men,” said Laura. The words popped from her startled mouth like corks from a bottle. For a sickening minute she thought Emily was going to ask her questions or stare at her curiously, but Emily only laughed.
    "Lord, she's not afraid of anything,” she said. “It's more the other way around. They're afraid of her. She just needs a good man who doesn't scare easy to get her back on the right track. Maybe we can find somebody for her,” and she smiled pleasantly at Laura.
    Upstairs again, Laura settled into her malevolent butterfly chair and wondered why Emmy was so short-sighted. It struck her as rather fine and noble that Beth didn't go out with men. It never occurred to her that Beth really might like men; without knowing why, without even thinking very seriously about it, she knew she didn't want her to like them.
    Laura was a naive girl, but not a stupid one. She was fuzzily aware of certain extraordinary emotions that were generally frowned upon and so she frowned upon them too, with no very good notion of what they were or how they happened, and not the remotest thought that they could happen to her. She knew that there were some men who loved men and some women who loved women, and she thought it was a shame that they couldn't be like other people. She thought she would simply feel sorry for them and avoid them. That would be easy, for the men were great sissies and the women wore pants. Her own high school crushes had been on girls, but they were all short and uncertain and secret feelings and she would have been profoundly shocked to hear them called homosexual.
    It would never have entered her head to doubt that Beth was solidly normal, because Laura thought that she herself was perfectly normal and she wasn't attracted to men. She thought simply that men were unnecessary to her. That wasn't unusual; lots of women live without men.
    What Laura would never know and Beth would never tell her, was the real reason she had given up seeing men. Beth had, over and above most people, a strongly affectionate nature, a strong curiosity, and a strong experimental bent. She would give anything a first try, and morality didn't bother her. Her own was mainly a comfortable hedonism. What she wanted she went after. At the time she met Laura, she wanted to be loved more than anything else.
    Beth had always wanted to be loved. She wanted to feel, not to dream; to know, not to wonder. She started as a little girl, trying to win her aunt and uncle in her search for love. Loving them was like trying to love a foam-rubber pillow: they allowed themselves to be squeezed but they popped right back into shape when they were released.
    Unknowingly, her aunt and uncle had started Beth on a long, anxious search for love. When she couldn't find it with them she turned to others, and when she grew up she turned to men. It was the natural thing to do; it was inevitable. For Beth grew up to be a very pretty girl, and when she began looking for a man to satisfy her she found more than one always willing to try.
    But none of them made it. First there was George, when she was still in high school. She was just fifteen and George was a Princeton man in his twenties. Beth liked them “older;” and the older ones liked her. George fell very much in love with her. He was fun, he had been places, he could take her out and show her a good time ... and he adored her. Her word was law.
    Beth administered the law for two years. The time began to drag interminably toward the end of the second year. George smothered her with love, and she began to doubt and to despise herself for not returning his passion. Here was real love, what she had always craved to make her life complete and meaningful, and what did it give her? A headache. George bored her.
    It was in this mood that she gave herself to George. She was seventeen. George, on his knees, had