“I’m kidding.”
“You better be.”
“But have there been many?” I asked, intrigued.
“Does it matter?”
“I suppose not. But I’d like to know anyway.”
“Well, let’s put it this way,” she said. “More than the Queen. Less than Elizabeth Taylor.”
“How many?” I insisted.
“Do you really want to know or are you just being a pervert?”
“A little of both,” I said.
“Three, if it matters that much to you,” she said. “My first was with a friend of Julian’s when I was eighteen. My second—”
“A friend of Julian’s?” I said, interrupting her. “Who?”
“Well, maybe I shouldn’t say. I suppose he might be a friend of yours too.”
“Who?” I repeated.
“I actually don’t remember his surname,” she said. “I met him by chance, on a night out with Julian just after I got my Leaving Cert results. It was at a party in someone’s house. His name was Jasper. He played the piano accordion. Of course, no one should play the piano accordion in public, they should be made to do it on some desert island somewhere, but as it turned out he played it rather well. I remember thinking that he had very sexy fingers.”
“Not Jasper Timson!” I said, sitting forward in shock.
“That’s the one,” she said, clapping her hands in delight. “Well done, you! Oh, I suppose that means you do know him then.”
“Of course I know him,” I said. “We went to school together. Are you actually telling me that you lost your virginity to Jasper Timson?”
“Well, yes,” she said with a shrug. “You have to lose it to someone, don’t you? And he was sweet. And good-looking. And he was there, which somehow was enough for me at the time. Look, Cyril, you said you didn’t mind.”
“I don’t mind. You know he lives in Toronto now, with his…” I paused and made quotation marks in the air with my fingers, “his boyfriend.”
“Yes, Julian told me,” said Alice, laughing as she sat back with a slight giggle.
“He tried to kiss him too once, you know.” It was all I could do not to burst out laughing.
“Did he? Doesn’t surprise me. It would only have surprised me if he hadn’t tried to kiss him. Anyway, I knew he was a homosexual even then. He confided in me that he thought he was but he wasn’t absolutely certain. Anyway, we were both young, we liked each other, I wanted to lose mine before another day passed, so I suggested we give it a go.”
“And what did he say?” I asked, stunned by all of this.
“Oh he jumped at the offer. And so we both leaped into bed. And it was fine. We both got what we wanted out of it. I got to pop my cherry and he got to realize that he was definitely not interested in doing that ever again. At least not with a girl. We shook hands afterward and went our separate ways. Well, metaphorically speaking. We didn’t literally shake hands. I mean, I suppose we might have done but I can’t imagine it. We probably kissed each other on the cheek. Which I think he preferred to where he had been kissing me. Anyway,” she continued, sounding as if she wanted to bring this conversation to a rapid end. “After Jasper, there was a boy who I dated for a few months, an aspiring actor who was most definitely not a homosexual, unless he was torturing himself by trying to have sex with every girl in Dublin. And then, finally, Fergus, of course.”
“Of course,” I said. “Good old Fergus.”
“We only got onto this topic,” she continued, “because I said that I want us to sleep together when Max and Samantha go to London.”
“Christ, you’re just mad for it, aren’t you?” I said.
“Shut up, Cyril,” she said, slapping my hand with her own. “You’re only pretending to be annoyed. So what do you say?”
“What room do you sleep in?”
“What?”
“In Dartmouth Square. Don’t forget, I grew up there.”
“Oh yes, of course. Well, my room is on the second floor.”
“Julian told me you had my old room. On the top floor.”
“I moved down a flight. All those stairs!”
“Well I’m not doing it there,” I said quickly. “That was Maude’s bedroom. There’s just…I couldn’t. I really couldn’t.”
“Fine. We can go up to the top floor if you prefer. Into your old bedroom. How does that sound?”
I thought about it and nodded reluctantly. “All right,” I said. “Yes, well I suppose so. If it’s that important to you.”
“It should be important to both of us.”
“It is,” I said, sitting up straight now and thinking, Fuck it; if Jasper Timson—who was even more of a homosexual than I was, considering he had an actual boyfriend—could do it, then so could I. “I’m in. I mean I will be in. No, that’s all wrong, I don’t mean I’ll—”
“Relax, Cyril. It’s fine. Shall we say Saturday? Around seven o’clock.”
“Saturday,” I agreed. “Around seven o’clock.”
“And have a bath before you come over.”
“Of course I’ll have a bath,” I snapped. “What do you take me for?”
“Sometimes boys don’t.”
“You have a bath,” I said. “Remember, I know where you’ve been.”
She smiled. “I knew you’d be willing when you saw how important it was to me. That’s one of the things I love about you, Cyril. You’re not like other boys. You’re sensitive to my feelings.”
“Yes, well…” I said, knowing that the days ahead would be long ones for me.
I kept my hands off myself for the rest of the week and didn’t go anywhere near the side streets or parks that were my regular nighttime haunts, wanting to be as randy as possible come the big moment. I tried to put it out of my head that no matter what happened then, even if it all went well, there was still that fifty years that Alice had mentioned ahead of us to think about too. In my foolishness, I decided that was a bridge I’d cross when I got to it.
And as things turned out, Saturday night went better than I could ever have predicted. I felt a genuine warmth toward her anyway, an affection bordering on the romantic if not quite the sexual, and there had been many times when I had enjoyed the prolonged kissing sessions in which we engaged. I insisted on the lights staying off, of course, for I wanted to get to know her body first by touch before being confronted with the reality of it, and although it was not what I wanted—it was soft to the touch, not muscled and hard as I liked, and smoother than I had ever imagined skin could be—I somehow found myself lost in the novelty of it and performed in a way that I think could best have been described as “perfectly adequate.”
“Well, that’s a start, at least,” said Alice when it was over.
She hadn’t reached any sort of climax, of course, although I had. Which seemed rather ironic to me, all things considered.
A Sign