Eve: Portrait of a Submissive

Chapter One-2

After Roger departed, Eve sat herself down on the tatty green sofa. She felt exhilarated; this may have been the best s*x she ever had. At least she couldn’t remember when she had come so many times. Often she didn’t come at all. She liked the way he made love, the way he kissed her, the way he undressed her, the way he held her down. And he was so big! He was big even for a man of his size and height, and she had always preferred tall men. She was also proud of the way she had taken the initiative in inviting him to her apartment (notwithstanding that he had approached her first). It was a feat that, in those days of women’s liberation, she perhaps rated too highly. But for her it was an unusual thing to do, for she was “a maiden never bold,” though technically not a maiden. But above all she was pleased with herself for having conceived a plan, a romantic plan, and carried it off.

Her initial reaction to the man and his attempt to pick her up had been negative. She supposed him to be one of those square older men prowling the Village for “hippie chicks,” impelled by media-inspired fantasies of uninhibited young women who freely “put out.” But when he offered her dinner, well, she was always short of cash, and while she rather prided herself on her poverty and indifference to material concerns, the offer of a free meal was not to be sneezed at. Besides, the man was quite attractive; he was tall, ruggedly built, and almost movie star handsome. He looked and acted like the kind of man who had no trouble getting women to sleep with him, beautiful, stylish women, for he was obviously well-heeled. As she considered herself a merely average looking young woman and was besides rather dowdy, she couldn’t help feeling a bit flattered.

She was also open to adventure, for lately she had been feeling bored and restless. For a long time she had wanted to go to Europe, traveling with a backpack and staying at youth hostels, and if she could scrape up a little money for airfare she just might do it. The prospect of foreign travel often inspires in people dreams of romantic s****l adventures. Sometimes Eve would picture herself sitting in an Italian piazza, in Florence or Rome, being accosted by a dark-haired, olive-skinned, muscular youth, followed by (confusing her geography somewhat) a night of passionate love making on a Mediterranean beach. Or she would imagine herself sitting in some Left Bank café in Paris, and be approached by some poetic looking young man, a student or maybe an artist, who would take her home to make love in a creaking bed in some upstairs garret.

Those were future possibilities. Meanwhile, it was a long time since she had slept with a man and she was becoming horny. Anonymous s*x with a handsome stranger was another appealing fantasy. During dinner she wondered what the man did. Maybe it was something dull, like selling insurance, or something she despised, like advertising. Fearing disillusionment, she decided not to ask him anything, not even his name. She would have her adventure, and the more mysterious and romantic the circumstances the better. But worried that her apparent disinterest in him had turned him off she decided to not wait for him to make the next move, but instead turn the tables and proposition him!

And now it was over and had turned out to be every bit as good as she had hoped. Perhaps it was that good in the beginning with Paul, her first lover, to whom she had lost her virginity, back in her one and only year of college. He too was tall, but lankier than Roger, and his hair was longer. No one would have imagined he was a businessman. Of course he was younger though three years older than herself. He was a political activist of the radical sort who had led a student strike which had shut down the university for a week. After the close of the academic year he decided to move to the city. To the horror of her family she followed him and together they moved into an apartment in the Village. She followed him too into his political activities, into meetings, into demonstrations; she tried to adopt his convictions as her own. But in her heart she lacked zeal, and in time he transferred his affections to another, a fierce young woman whose dedication to the cause matched his own. Heartbroken, Eve moved out and “crashed” for a while in an apartment with three other people, with a sleeping bag for a bed. She refused to return to school, resolving to remain in the city, finding casual employment, mostly as a waitress. She was helped out a little by her older sister, who had graduated from the same upstate college with a degree in English, and who now worked for a publisher in New York and had married a lawyer. Her sister lent her money from time to time, which she never repaid.

For a while she drifted, eventually drifting into the orbit of Patrick, the scapegrace son of a prominent attorney, who had spent a year at Columbia and either dropped out or was expelled, she was never sure which, and now made his living dealing drugs. Tall, highly intelligent, voluble, pugnacious, charismatic, he liked to read philosophy, and could discuss Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. He was subject to mood swings, perhaps a native quality, or maybe the effects of too frequent use of methamphetamines, which he tried to get her to use, as well as heroin. But she resisted the use of hard drugs, being frightened of needles, among other things and was content with the use of psychedelics, mostly m*******a, though she experimented a few times with LSD and once with mescaline. She found the experience thrilling but had a black reaction afterwards, and soon abandoned them. Meanwhile Patrick became more and more volatile, and in his black moods would lash out at her, until finally he resorted to striking her. It was the final straw; she packed up her meager possessions and fled.

She found a haven with another young woman who had befriended her, and who had her own apartment, the very place she now lived in. That friend introduced her to a feminist consciousness raising group. A somewhat solitary, bookish girl, Eve had never had a lot of female friends, but having lately sworn off men, she found new pleasure in the companionship of a group of women. But ideological zeal of any kind being foreign to her nature she came to feel out of place, so before long she dropped out. By then she had found the bookstore job. She spent so much time reading there that the manager, a middle-aged gentleman who had taken a fatherly interest in her, approached her when a vacancy developed. He teased her that with the additional income she might actually buy a book now and then. It was a perk of the job that she received a discount on purchases and she was able to expand her collection of poetry.

After a time her friend decided to move out of the city. The apartment was cheap and rent-controlled and with her job she could just manage the rent. She approached her sister who agreed to loan her the security deposit and to co-sign the lease, so the landlord allowed her take the place over. Her sister was happy at least that she was settling down a little. She was somewhat appalled upon seeing the place but its very smallness was a recommendation, thinking there was not much room for a man, and with her sister’s taste in men that was all to the good.

She now entered into a happier phase of her life. Her heart had mended and she came to find her life romantic, living in the big city, eking out her meager means by enjoying free concerts and museums. Her very poverty seemed to her romantic, redolent of la vie boheme, of artists living in garrets. The arts were her passion and she would have liked to have been an artist herself. She even wrote poetry, which unfortunately was not very good. Meanwhile she had found a safer crowd to hang out with; she didn’t want any more Patricks in her life. Her self-imposed moratorium on s*x came to end and she began to sleep around a lot. There were a lot of one night stands. It was better that way, there seemed to be something dangerous about the men she became attached to. After a while though she ceased to find much pleasure in it. She was passive in bed and believed she was a lousy lay. Once she overheard a couple of guys talking about her, one of them saying “She just lays there.” She was mortified, but it was true.

Lately she had begun to tire of her life, which had come to seem pointless and futile. Her romantic notions of bohemian life had begun to fray. The people she knew were mostly kids sowing their wild oats, temporary dropouts from society, mixed with some older burned out, or drugged out cases. Men too she came to tire of, and began another period of self-imposed celibacy. Perhaps after all she should go back to school, not returning upstate, but applying to one of the free colleges of the City University system. She would still have to work, of course. Her bookstore job, which she liked, was a daytime job. Still, there were ways of working things out.

So she was ready for a change in her life when out of nowhere this tall, handsome stranger from a different world entered it. Still glowing in the aftermath of her post-coital euphoria, she felt a sudden craving for new adventures. Perhaps this attractive, virile man would be the one to provide them.