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poor thing just wouldn’t understand. I think there were several of them that didn’t, quite, either, but this one kept asking and asking until finally Mrs. Halliwell broke down and explained that the one stuck his pecker in the other one’s mouth.”
    I was thinking right then that I’d have given a thousand dollars to hear that Mrs. Halliwell explaining to her poor demure friend about cocksucking. “She said ‘pecker’?” I asked.
    “I think she said ‘manhood.’ Anyhow, having said it, Mrs. Halliwell brought up the fact that it’s illegal, putting your mouth on someone else’s reproductive parts.”
    “No, it’s not,” I said, though I knew it was most places, and probably here as well.
    “Yes, it is. The law went after these two fellows and not just because the one deserted his wife.” She took a deep breath and paused before expelling it. “Mrs. Halliwell, who was enjoying our ill ease, shocked the other ladies by saying there were women deviates who practice a form of the same vice. Pussy-licking. Well, if you don’t think that got them all indignant. Most of them thought she was having us on. So it got me thinking.”
    “About me tonguing your pussy?”
    She got red and looked off toward the doorway. “I don’t know of anybody else who does that. I’d never even heard of it until you did it to me that first night.”
    “I thought you liked it,” said I, knowing perfectly well she did.
    “I do.” She was quite flushed now. “But it’s not natural, is it?”
    “Sure it is.”
    “But it’s not. Where did you learn it, anyway?”
    “A lady whose husband wouldn’t. He thought it was unnatural, too.”
    “Well. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it. But I feel so ashamed, just lying there and feeling lips and a tongue on it. Think of what else goes on down there.”
    I shrugged. “If you want me to quit it, I will.”
    “No,” she said. “I’ve just been thinking, is all.” She sat up, as though just remembering something. “And where exactly have you been all these weeks without a word?”
    “In Denver, taking pictures. You could stop by and see the studio sometime if you wanted.”
    “I meant why’ve you not been by to see me?”
    She sounded genuinely puzzled and a little wounded, and I wondered if she possibly could have forgotten the vicious tongue lashing she’d given me the last time I’d stopped by for a quick one. Among other things she’d expressed a wish never to see me again, a wish I’d promised to fulfill. I’d meant it, too, but I hadn’t counted on the effect of weeks of celibacy on my stability and resolve, or on the contents of my scrotum. I’d had no desire to patronize the whores on Market Street, and the sin of Onan, which practice had been my sole sexual release for so many weeks, never provokes a sufficient volume of ejaculate to properly evacuate the nuts. (I remain convinced that the inevitable putrefaction of that residual semen is the cause of what we used to call in the army “blue balls.”)
    “You told me not to come back, ever,” I said.
    She slapped her hand down on my chest, playfully, but hard enough to hurt. “I was mad at you, you stupid man. That doesn’t mean I truly didn’t want you to come back,” she said, in an absurdly coquettish tone for a naked woman speaking to a man who has recently had to extract one of her shortest and curliest poils from between his incisors.
    I was about to dress and make my excuses, hoping to avoid another screaming fit, when a loud rapping came from the door downstairs: one, two, full rest, three four, full rest,five, six, and seven. Priscilla went rigid and sat straight upright, eyes wide and nostrils flared.
    “What’s the matter?” I asked her, and she hissed to quiet me down, then crept to the window on her knees. She lifted the corner of the curtain, then turned back to me in a panic.
    “Isn’t this Wednesday?” she asked.
    “It’s Thursday,” I said, and she covered her mouth up with