Sister Wolf Read Online Free PDF Page B

only three good places on you, for a man—on your chest and between your legs. How can you like yourself if you see yourself the way a man sees you? Do you happen to know that you have two blue veins framing your cunt? Do you know when those veins have a pulse? (Are you talking to me? said Marit, lifting her upper lip. She looked mulish and threatened and idiotic. Lola made fun of her. Oh, pardon me, please; I should have said your “area”) Lola was sawing her hands back and forth, making parallel lines. Heterosexual sex was like a railroad line. You get on the tracks and there is one destination. You can even take the milk route, a long ride with a lot of station stops, but the trip is over when the man gets off.
    There were depths of prudery in Marit, and this was ugly talk. She wanted to curl halfway around on herself, like a possum hiding. She wanted to drop the knife or throw a tantrum, if that would change the subject. There was no matching Lola in this mood. Why couldn’t Marit hoist her own legs up on the table, inhale deeply and let the cigarette hang off her lip, and trade theory and anecdote like a professional? Lola was a master seducer, but Marit had spent her maturity avoiding seduction. Her public face was a scowl. She took seats next to children and ancients on the bus or airplane. On city streets her head was like a beacon rotating on its shaft. If she felt a presence behind her on an un-crowded block, she slipped into the nearest shop or building. She was proud of her alertness; rape victims did not have her peripheral vision or her marginal attention.
    The face she presented to her masculine peers was bristly and sarcastic. The boasters were mimicked; the pompous got punctured. Hunks and clubmen would back right off, with only their fur singed. There were times when her sharp tongue had failed her. The king of the stag line, voted Mr. Thinks He Is by his senior class, called her up one night after midnight to tell her that she had starred in one of his dreams. He was lying on the examining table in a doctor’s office; she came in, dressed like a nurse, in a very short uniform. Marit cut him off, but the hand that replaced the receiver was trembling. She felt as if her soul had been stolen, like a Navajo Indian who is frightened of tourists with cameras. The incident gave proof to her budding opinion that all boys were like her caller under the skin.
    Young men carry their self-esteem like novice waiters learning to balance a full tray on one bent palm. Marit threatened their poise, except in the case of Sandy Egmont, who had never learned to fake self-confidence where he had none. When Marit was twenty-two, Sandy had come to Niles to study owls, especially the little owl, because it had some degree of color vision. Sandy’s own eyes were freakish; one was blue and one half-blue, half-brown. They had emptied the spare-parts bin when they made him, and had given him ears like a flying fox, along with great veined hands and feet like Michelangelo’s David. Any sentiment that Marit possessed was reserved for Sandy, who had no vanity, who said “O.K.,” like a child being brave, when she refused to kiss him, and kept right on asking her on owl walks, wanting her help in wording proposals for foundation grants, and making up packets of herbs for her to take when she had a cold. When they did go to bed, it was because they liked each other so much and they were both late virgins. It turned out that Sandy also had a great veined penis. “My, that’s a nice one,” said Marit, who was as curious as an ape, watching it. “I don’t know much about this,” said Sandy. “I’m the bell,” said Marit, “you’re supposed to be the clapper.” They managed, because they had waited so long, and they had no nasty experiences to inhibit them.
    By the time Sandy got his grant, which took him to a wilderness laboratory in Montana, Marit had decided that there should be more to sex than cuddling. If Sandy liked