Part 6 (1/2)

Mary Lou is learning very fast-so much faster than I did that it is astonis.h.i.+ng. But she has me to help her, and I had no one.

I found some easy books with big print and pictures and I would read slowly aloud to Mary Lou and have her say words after me. And on the third day we made a discovery. It was in the Arithmetic for Boys and Girls book. One problem began: ”There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet. . .” Mary Lou said, ”What's *alphabet'?” and I decided to try to find it in Dictionary. And I did. And Dictionary said: ”Alphabet: the letters of a given language, arranged in the order fixed by custom. See facing page.” I puzzled for a moment over what a ”given” language might be, and a ”facing” page, and then I looked at the page on the other side of the book and it was a chart, with the letter ”A” at the top and the letter ”Z” at the bottom. They were all familiar, and their order seemed familiar too. I counted them, and there were twenty-six, just as Arithmetic for Boys and Girls had said. ”The order fixed by custom” seemed to mean the way people arranged them, like plants in a row. But people didn't arrange letters. Mary Lou and I were, as far as I knew, the only people who knew what a letter was. But of course people-perhaps everybody-had once known letters, and they must have put them into an order that was called an alphabet.

I looked at them and said them aloud: ”A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J . . .” And then it struck me. That was the way the words were put into Dictionary! The ”A” words were first, and then the ”B” words!

I explained it to Mary Lou and she seemed to understand immediately. She took the book and leafed through it. I noticed that she had already become expert at handling books; her awkwardness with them was gone. After a minute she said, ”We should memorize the alphabet.”

Memorize. To learn by heart. ”Why?” I said.

She looked up at my face. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, in her yellow Synlon dress that I had bought her, and I was sitting at my bed-and-desk, with books piled on it in front of me. ”I'm not sure,” she said. She looked back down at the book in her lap. ”Maybe it would help us use this book, if we could say the alphabet?”

I thought about that a moment. ”All right,” I said.

So we memorized it. And I was embarra.s.sed because she could say it long before I could. But she helped me learn to say it, and I finally did learn. It was difficult-especially the last part that went ”W, X, Y, Z”-but I finally got it straight and said the whole twenty-six letters exactly right twice. When I finished Mary Lou laughed and said, ”Now we know something together,” and I laughed too. I didn't know why. It wasn't really funny.

She looked at my face a moment, smiling. Then she said, ”Come here and sit by me.” And I found myself doing it, sitting on the rug next to her.

Then she said, ”Let's say it one after the other,” and she squeezed my arm and said, ”A.”

This time the touch of her did not embarra.s.s me or make me self-conscious. Not at all. I said, ”B.”

She said, ”C,” and turned herself around to face me.

I said, ”D,” and watched her mouth, waiting for her to say her letter. She moistened her lips with her tongue, and said it softly. ”E.” It sounded like a sigh.

I said, ”F,” quickly. My heart was beginning to beat fast.

She turned her face and put her mouth next to my ear and said, ”G.” Then she giggled softly. And I felt something that almost made me jump. It was warm and wet, on my ear, and I realized it was her tongue. My heart almost stopped.

I did not know what to do, so I said, ”H.”

This time her tongue was actually in my ear. It made a shudder, a soft shudder, pa.s.s through my body, and something seemed to go loose in my stomach. And in my mind. With her tongue still in my ear she breathed, ”I”-stretching it out so that it sounded: ”aaaaiiiiiieeeeeeeee.”

Frankly I had not had a s.e.xual experience for blues and yellows. And what I was feeling now was something altogether new to me, and so exciting, so overwhelming, so shaking to my body and my imagination that I found myself sitting on the floor with her face against mine and I was crying. My face was becoming wet with tears.

And she whispered, ”Jesus, Paul. You're crying. In front of me.”

”Yes,” I said. ”I'm sorry. I shouldn't. . .”

”Do you feel bad?”

I wiped at my cheek with my hand, and it brushed against hers. I held still, with the, back of my hand against her cheek, and then I felt her hand turning mine, ever so gently, until my palm was holding her cheek. I felt a wave of a new feeling, a soft, sweet feeling like that of a powerful drug, enter me. I looked at her face, at her wide and curious eyes, now somewhat sad. ”No,” I said. ”No. I don't feel bad at all. I feel . . . something. I don't know.” I was still crying. ”It's a very good thing, what I feel.”

Her face was very close to mine. She seemed to understand what I was saying, and she nodded her head. ”Shall we finish saying the letters?”

I smiled. Then I said, ”J.” And I took my hand from her cheek and placed it on her back. ”*J' is the next letter.”

She smiled.

We did not get to the difficult part of the alphabet. The ”W, X, Y and Z.”

DAY FIFTY-NINE.

Mary Lou has moved in with me! For two nights now we have slept together in my bed. By unfastening the desk part of it and setting it against the wall, she was able to make room for herself.

It was difficult for me to sleep with another person in the bed with me. I had heard of men and women sharing beds, but never to sleep in. But that was the way she wanted to do it, so I have done it.

I am self-conscious about her body, afraid to touch her or press against her. But I awoke this morning to find myself holding her in my arms. She was snoring lightly. I smelled her hair and kissed her lightly on the back of the neck and then just lay there, holding her sleeping body for a long, long time, until she woke.

She laughed when she woke and found me holding her and snuggled against me warmly. I became self-conscious again. But then we started talking and I forgot my self-consciousness. She talked about learning to read. She said she had dreamt she was reading-had dreamt that she had already read thousands and thousands of books and now knew everything there was to know about life.

”What is there to know about life?” I asked.

”Everything,” she said. ”They keep us so ignorant.”

I wasn't certain I understood that-or who ”they” were-so I said nothing.

”Let's have breakfast,” she said. And I called the servo and we ate soybars and pig bacon. I felt very good, even though I had slept little.

During breakfast she leaned over the desk and kissed me. Just like that! I liked it.

After breakfast I decided to work on a film, and Mary Lou watched it with me. It was called The Stock Broker and its star was Buster Keaton. Buster Keaton is a very intense man who has many unusual difficulties in his films. They would be funny if they were not so sad.

Mary Lou was fascinated. She had never seen any films of any kind before and was only familiar with holographic TV, which she did not like.

Early in the first reel, when Buster Keaton was painting a house and kept painting the face of a man who would put his head out the window, Mary Lou said, ”Paul, Buster Keaton looks exactly like you. He's so ... serious!”

And she was right.

After the film we spent the day studying reading. She learns amazingly fast and asks interesting questions. I have had many students in the university where I teach, but none like her. And my reading is improving too.

Everything about her is delightful.

It is evening now, and Mary Lou is watching me write this at the desk propped against the wall. I explained to her about writing and she was excited and said that she must learn to do that too so that she could write down the memory of her life. ”And write down other things I think of. So I can read them,” she said.

That was interesting. Maybe that is the true reason that I write this-since I write so much more than Spofforth ever meant for me to record-I write it so I can read it. Reading it does something strange and exciting in my mind.

Perhaps one reason Mary Lou is bolder than I is that she lived in a Worker Dormitory before she ran away and I, of course, am a graduate of a Thinker Dormitory. Yet she is so fiercely intelligent! Why would she have been trained to be a Worker and not a Thinker? Perhaps the choices are made on some basis other than intelligence.

I must remember to get more paper, so that Mary Lou can learn to write and can begin to print out the memory of her life.

DAY SIXTY-FIVE.

She has lived with me nine days now, against all principles of Individualism and Privacy. I feel guilty at times, compromising my Interior Development by the whims of another person, but I don't think about the immorality of that very often. In fact, these have been the happiest nine days of my life.

And she already reads nearly as well as I do! Amazing! And she has begun to write the memory of her life.

We are together constantly. It seems at times like Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford-except they were too well-trained to have s.e.x.

There is no s.e.x at all in the old films, although many of the people live together in the most intimate and immoral ways. p.o.r.no, of the kind normally taught in Cla.s.sics courses, was apparently undiscovered, like TV, at the time these silent films were made.