I really enjoy being with Tom. He´s just as funny and warm as Saul, without the self-assurance. Taking him to bed Sunday night really made us both feel wonderful. On Monday, though, at lunch, when Sigrid walked up to me in the Union, I had a kind of uneasy feeling. Certainly just misplaced guilt.
“Are you Mary Travis?”
‘Why beat around the bush?´ I thought. “Right. You´re Sigrid, but I don´t have your last name.”
“Sigrid Sorenson. I wanted to ask if you and Anne will be home tonight. I´d like to come by and talk to you alone. Can we do that?”
“Far as I know. I´ll probably see Anne this afternoon; I´ll check with her. If there´s a problem, can I call you?”
She gave me her number and her e-mail address and said goodbye.
When she knocked, Anne opened the door. “Hi, Sigrid. I´m Anne Stilwell.”
“Yes. Thanks for letting me come.”
She´s Anne´s height, quite slim, really short black hair that curls, doesn´t kink, and blue eyes. Small breasts and waist, long torso. Cute buns. Very pretty oval face, white skin, strong arched eyebrows.
Naturally, the first thing that caught her eye was the group of pictures on the wall. She looked at them carefully, missed nothing.
“Tom told me these were good. I don´t know Will Spector, but I can see they are better than good, at least as far as I can tell. I really like them.”
“Have a seat,” I said. “How about a beer? You want to talk, it´s dry work.”
“Thanks, I would. I´m a little nervous about this, but I want to get to know you two. You mean a lot to Tom and I like him a lot, and well...” She ground to a halt.
“Tom´s told us a little about you,” I said. “He seems to like you a lot. We like that. At the same time, he seems to be a little confused about the whole thing, and that´s a little bothering.”
“I met Saul, too, at Thanksgiving.”
Anne said, “He told us he liked you, that you are smart as well as good-looking. That´s all we know.”
“Tom tell you I intend to be a virgin when I get married?”
“Yeah. That´s between the two of you, none of our business.”
“Mary, that´s just what I believe, that I should be a virgin for my husband. My religion says it´s right and I accept it.”
“So, why are you here? Please don´t think either of us is hostile, we just really don´t know.”
“Anne, something happened to me last summer that I want to tell you about because it has to do with me and Tom and why I don´t care that he sleeps with both of you.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Shit, Mary, I´d have to be blind. But it´s okay. In fact, if I wanted to be cynical about it, it makes learning to love each other easier, because he´s not quite as anxious to get in my pants.”
“Does that mean we´re providing a stud service here?” I asked.
“Please, don´t be touchy. Tom genuinely loves you both, I can tell that. He thinks the world of you. In fact, if he and I go much further, it´s going to be because he has enough room in his love for me, as well as for you. Right now, for him, you two come first, and that´s the way it should be. He doesn´t know me well yet, maybe never will. I like him a lot, but it´s too soon to say how far it´ll go.”
“I guess we ought to shut up and let you tell your story. No more questions, okay?” I said.
Sigrid sipped her beer and began. “Until last summer, I was a good girl from Michigan, out of Wisconsin, not a doubt in the world about what the preacher told me. Then, my Sorenson aunt in Sweden invited me to spend the summer with her family outside of Stockholm. Of course, I said I´d go. My folks encouraged me, and nowadays I wonder if they didn´t have a reason for it.
“When I got there, I met my two girl cousins; they´re about my age. I liked them right away, and I still do. Well, as soon as I recovered from the trip, we went off for an afternoon with two of their boyfriends. There was a lake nearby and they took off their clothes and went swimming in the nude. I was terrified.”
“I´ll bet,” I said.
“Well, there were a lot of other people there, too, and they were all naked, so I finally took off my clothes and went in. It was fantastic, but I was sure there was something about it that was wrong.
“Later, when we got home, I told my Aunt Karin about it, and how worried I was. She sat me down and gave me a lecture about how the body is a good thing and being naked is natural and doesn´t have anything to do with sex, really.”
“Except in the good ol´ USA,” Anne said.
Sigrid took a swig and smiled. “Then she said something else that simply floored me. She told me that my cousins´ boyfriends were going to stay for supper and spend the night with them, and did I want her to find a boy for me.”
“I´ll bet you were ready to fly home by flapping your arms,” I said.
“Exactly. I panicked. I started yelling and screaming and carrying on about God and Jesus, and this and that. She just let me go on until I ran down. Fortunately the girls were outside somewhere with their boys. They didn´t hear all this.
“Anyway, eventually I became rational again, and Aunt Karin and I started to talk seriously. We went over the whole business, and she made me see that my decision for virginity is my own decision. She never criticized it; she urged me to stick to my guns if I continued to believe as I do. But not require other people to think that way.”
“I like your Aunt Karin. She´s like my own Aunt Bessie.”
“Well, I spent the whole summer there, until it was time to come here. We went swimming naked with the boys every nice day. We were naked in the house a lot. The boys slept over as often as not, and other times the girls went to their houses for the night. A couple of times guys wanted to sleep with me, but when I said no, that was it. There certainly were plenty of girls who would.
“The whole family went to the public saunas, hanging out naked with all sorts of men and women.
“After my cousins realized I wasn´t some kind of a Jesus Freak, we´d go on two or three-day hikes with their guys. We´d camp out and they´d share their sleeping bags, even though I slept alone. They did think I was kind of odd. Sometimes I would see them making love in the sunshine. They didn´t care; they really enjoyed it. They exchanged their lovers, and they each had several boyfriends.
“And on Sundays we all went to church. They are quite a devout family.”
“You got more than just a cultural exchange, Sigrid, you got a whole new education,” Anne said.
“You´ve got that right.
“Anyway. Here I am at the University, and I met Tom and I like him a lot. He´s in your study group and he makes love to both of you. I won´t go to bed with him or anyone else until I´m married.”
“And?” I said.
“Because you mean a lot to him, I wanted to meet you and get to know you some. I want you to know that I´m glad Tom has someone he loves and who loves him. I want him to love me, too. If he does, maybe someday we´ll marry. That´s it.”
“What about after marriage, Sigrid?”
“The service says ‘forsaking all others´. If I swear to that I´ll live by it. So will my husband, or it´s over. You do what you say you´ll do.”
“Can´t argue with that.”
Anne said, “Sigrid, how did it make you feel when your cousins were making love with their boyfriends in front of you?”
Sigrid laughed. “Oh, Lord, how else? Horny. The first time I saw it, my nipples felt like they were going to burst and I got so wet I thought I had my period. I talked to Aunt Karin about it and she reminded me how, at times like that, a girl´s best friend is her finger. I masturbated a lot from then on, and I still do sometimes, especially after Tom... Well anyway, that was my solution.
“And it was funny, too. Once when we were all camping, it was raining and I was sharing a tent with Kristin and her boyfriend. They were in one bag, I was right next to them. They were making love – I could feel them moving. I was playing with myself and we all got off at the same time. But I never told them. They thought I was a little strange as it was.
“And, Aunt Karin got me on the pill, too.”
“What for?” I asked.
“If for some bizarre reason I got raped and pregnant, I couldn´t possibly consider an abortion. ‘Play it safe and certain,´ is what Aunt Karin said.”
Sigrid stood up. “Listen, thanks for hearing me out. You´ve listened to me and you haven´t given me anything but support, even though you don´t think the way I do, and I appreciate it. But now, I´ll leave you alone.”
“Hey, you can´t leave. You haven´t finished your beer. That´s illegal in any religion,” Anne said.
Sigrid laughed. “Well, there´s a lot of Muslims and Baptists who´d argue with you on that. But I won´t.” She sat back down.
“What are your plans for college?” I asked.
“Well, while I was in High School, I did a lot of my dad´s bookkeeping. He has a pharmacy in Holland, Michigan. I like the work, and so I think I´ll go for a CPA. Uh... It just occurred to me... I don´t want to seem pushy or anything. Be honest with me. Is it possible for me to join your study group?”
I looked at Anne. She looked at me. Eventually I said, “As for me, I´d say yes, but I don´t know if you really want that.”
“Why?”
“Well, we meet here in these two rooms, the six of us. We work pretty hard – that´s not the problem. But a lot of the time we don´t bother with clothes. Now, that may not bother you too much after last summer, but seven of us bare ass in here – I think that´s what they call a body-contact sport.”
“It is already,” Anne said.
“Besides, we all spend the night here, even though the bed´s not really big enough, and breakfast is bare, too. Will sketches everything. And sometimes...”
“I see what you mean. I don´t think it would be fair for me to join and not be a fully functioning member of the group.”
Anne said, “Sigrid, as far as Mary and I are concerned, it´s your choice. If you want to join, we want you, too. You´d have to convince the guys, but with your looks and your attitude – the virginity issue aside – you wouldn´t have a problem.”
We talked for a long time about many other things. Saul is right, Sigrid is a smart, very nice, very pretty girl.
Eventually, it was time to quit, and Sigrid got up to leave. I said, “Look, you already know Tom, Saul and the two of us. When you see us at the Union, or someplace, join us if you feel like it. Might as well get to know the rest of us.”
“Thanks. That´s nice of you. I will.”
At the door, she turned to Anne, put her arms around her and gave her a comprehensive hug, kissed her cheek. She turned to me, did the same. Full body contact, one hand on my back, the other on my ass. Lips on my cheek.
When she broke away, I grabbed her shoulders. “What the hell was that about?”
“That was ‘Thank you´. From my heart.”
I moved my hands to her waist, waited.
“Something I didn´t tell you. When Kristin or Melanie didn´t have a date on a hike, we shared a sleeping bag. It was fabulous.”
This time, her kiss was on my lips. We touched tongues.
When she was gone, I looked at Anne. “I like her. Remember I said we couldn´t find another girl as nutty as we are?”
“Uh-huh.”
“She´s that nutty, just not in a way we can work with.”
“Don´t be too sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“‘Forsaking all others´, remember? She said, ‘If I swear to that´...”