The Proposal, Page 2

wasn't so crude as to say this. However, the only other thing to do was to leave. But that, in effect, said the same thing. He'll never forget how awkwardly and ungraciously he left that lady's apartment.

  But this was Sylvia. Even if she wasn't interested in sex, crazy though it was, Bob was still interested in her. He didn't want to leave. If necking was all she was willing to do, he was eager to join her in that circumscribed amorous activity. But he didn't know how to say so, nor what to do.

  Sylvia, however, did.

  "So now you know." she said matter-of-factly, and she leaned forward and kissed him sweetly.

  Bob was totally confused, but grateful and contented that she was willing to allow him to stay. The inconsequential conversation returned for a short while, but soon the necking resumed … and progressed. In the course of their resumed kissing Bob's hand accidentally brushed across one of Sylvia's breasts. This was a genuine accident, not part of his technique. But she took no notice of it. A little later another genuine accidental touching occurred, and again Sylvia did nothing. In fact, if anything, her kissing became more passionate.

  Bob was confused but delighted. And since he was in the middle of a necking session… a necking session with Sylvia! … he had neither the leisure nor inclination to contemplate the obvious inconsistency between her "I'm a virgin" announcement and her enthusiastic petting participation. So he didn't consider it. Instead, in his extreme and growing sexually excited state he again initiated his touching technique. This time it went like clockwork.

  Soon there were buttons unbuttoned, zippers unzipped, buckles unbuckled, fasteners unfastened and skirts pulled up. And two pair of happy hands were eagerly exploring bodies they had never touched before.

  This hand activity soon got so active it was on the verge of getting out of hand. At that point Sylvia withdrew her own hands, removed Bob's, stood up and softly announced, "I think we'd better finish this in the bedroom."

  She reached down and grabbed Bob by the hand then led him across the room to the closed door which she opened. Indeed, it was the door into her bedroom. She led him into it then let go of his hand and stepped over to another door which she opened. It was the bathroom door. She stepped in and turned on a night-light. Leaving the bathroom door open she crossed back to the bedroom door where she reached into the apartment's main room and turned off its light. Then the only illumination was the bathroom's dim night-light which romantically lit the bedroom with the bare minimum amount of light to see by.

  Sylvia stepped up to Bob, kissed him and began undressing him. Since she was being so kind as to undress him, he was obliged to return the favor. Shortly they both were completely nude. Sylvia kissed him again, stepped over to the bed and pulled the bedspread and blanket off onto the floor at the end of the bed. The only remaining bedclothes was a sheet which she slipped under. Bob didn't have to be asked to join her. And between the sheets he then did with Sylvia that which he had always wanted to do with Sylvia, but which he had doubted she'd ever allow.

  III

  They lay quietly together for a long while after their act was finished. Then Sylvia kissed him and said, "Excuse me a minute." She got up, scurried into the bathroom and partly closed the door, leaving just a sliver through which a tiny bit of light came into the bedroom.

  Bob lay on the bed with nothing to do but think about what had just happened. Now he had time to ponder the inconsistency between Sylvia's "I'm a virgin" announcement and her eager participation in an act which no virgin has ever experienced. Not only did he have time to think about it, he had a lot more to think about, for not only had Sylvia been eager in bed, she had been downright skillful, coaching him to proceed much more slowly than is his custom, a leisurely approach he at first found frustrating, but which in the end he discovered to be vastly more gratifying than any sex he had ever experienced.

  He couldn't make a bit of sense of Sylvia's contradiction, but soon he decided he shouldn't be trying to figure it out at the moment. The time had come for him to go. He had shared an intimate experience with an unmarried young woman who lives in a busy apartment building. If this apartment complex were like all the others he knows it has some tenants who have a critical opinion of such goings on. So the gentlemanly thing to do would be to get dressed and discreetly leave before it becomes obvious to such neighbors that his and Sylvia's relationship is much more than neighborly.

  Accordingly he got out of bed and stepped over to the chair where Sylvia had laid his clothes. As he approached the chair he noticed the neat way she had placed them. Despite the excitement of the undressing, she hadn't just thrown his clothes on the chair. Rather, she had neatly hung them over it. This orderliness was what he would expect from Sylvia, but it only made him wonder all the more at her contradictions, at the difference between the neat way she had arranged his clothes and the messy way she had piled things on the chairs and couch in her kitchenette/living room.

  Just as Bob reached the chair and was putting on his shorts Sylvia came out of the bathroom.

  "What are you doing?" she asked.

  "I thought I'd better get out of here before your neighbors start gossiping about your having a man in your apartment in the middle of the night."

  "I don't care if they talk about you being here. In fact I expect they will. So what?"

  That did it! Not only couldn't Bob stop thinking about her contradictions, now he felt impelled to confront her about them.

  "Sylvia, you puzzle the devil out of me! On the one hand you're the most prudish woman I've ever dated. We'd been out a dozen times before you even let me kiss you goodnight … on the cheek! But now you say you don't care if your neighbors know you slept with me!"

  "Sleep, my dear Robert, is not what we just did." she teased with a coy smirk.

  "There you go again!" he accused. "No girl who won't kiss on the first date should say something like that. That's something only a … a …"

  He couldn't think of any word appropriate to describe a woman who joked about a sexual encounter, any word that he was willing to apply to Sylvia. So he just stood there stuttering.

  "What kind of woman would say that?" she teased again with a big mischievous grin. Bob, however, may not have realized she was playing with him because she was standing nude on the other side of the bed, and he was having the devil's own time trying to think of anything other than her exciting and enticing nudity.

  "Well, it's for sure no virgin would." he finally answered. "And that's another thing. All that malarkey about being a virgin and saving yourself for your future husband. What was that all about?"

  "I was just letting you know the ground rules."

  "What ground rules?" Bob demanded.

  "The rules saying that what you were trying to do is equivalent to a marriage proposal, and if I let you do it, I accepted."

  "Oh no!! Oh no you don't! You're not going to trap me that way! I've been around the block. I know how you desperate women try to catch husbands. Next thing I know you'll be telling me you're pregnant. But it won't work."

  "I'm not pregnant. You can rest assured on that." Now she wasn't teasing. Now she spoke quite matter-of-factly, maybe a bit sternly.

  "Yeah, you say that now. But next week you'll come crying to me saying you missed your period and I have to marry you."

  "Well I thought you wanted to marry me because you love me. But if you don't love me, you won't have to marry me on account of any pregnancy, because at the moment I can't get pregnant."

  "Oh yeah? Why not?"

  "Because at the moment I'm on the pill."

  "Oh sure! You're on the pill. Sylvia, you've got more contradictions than a squirrel has nuts. So tell me, why would a virgin be on the pill?"

  "Because this virgin could see where our dating was heading: Only dating each other, and two to four times a week. Where else could it be heading? I didn't want anything to interfere with our first love act, anything like messing arou
nd with condoms and such. So at my last gynecological exam I had my doctor give me a prescription for birth control pills."

  "I don't buy that for a minute. If you're on the pill you're no virgin. If you're on the pill it must be because you've been fooling around. That explains a lot of things. No virgin can do the things in bed you just did with me. I mean, you really know your way around between the sheets. The way you stopped it when I …"

  He had to pause because he was embarrassed to acknowledge or mention that he had almost had a premature response which would have terminated their love act while it was barely beginning. Finally he found a circumlocution to use.

  "Well … when I almost … almost went off too early. You sure didn't learn that trick selling Girl Scout cookies."

  "Of course not. I learned it from a sex book, one of the two I read that my OB/GYN recommended to me when I told her I was planning on getting married. You do remember what books are." she resumed her teasing, "Guttenberg and all that? And aren't you glad I do read? It really worked. I guess I should be flattered that I excite you so much you can't control yourself. But your prematurity, if that's what we should call it, could have ruined everything."

  "Sylvia, stop talking like that! And stop pretending you're a virgin. I'm not going to fall for your you-took-away-my-virginity blackmail and marry you."

  "I most