Forbidden Fruit by Annie Murphy, Peter de Rosa

sensitive spot in my entire body.”
    He was anxious to do for me what I had done for him. He went on patiently, stroking my breast with one hand, searching for
     the sensitive spot in my vagina with the other.
    The minutes went by and, “Still nothing?”
    I smiled. “If you want a rest.”
    But he was a competitor. An hour passed. He varied his approach, going all over my body from head to toe, with his hands,
     lips, tongue, fingertips, kissing me and enjoying me while I told him stories about my life and my family.
    In the long soothing silences, I had the courage to remember horrendous things.
    My husband resented me. He was a prowler and very handsome, like a black-haired Steve McQueen. When we started going out together,
     he treated me so courteously I didn’t realize what a stud he was. His ego hung on his ability to perform sexually. He was
     so attractive to beautiful women I often asked myself, “Why did he choose me?”
    The answer when it came almost destroyed me.
    One night of our courtship, we drove to a lonely beach. When I went to kiss him, he became enraged.
    “Don’t be a slut.”
    That was the first sign that we had problems.
    “Are you crazy?” I said to him.
    “Don’t do
that
, you hear?” he yelled, brushing me aside.
    I had simply kissed him without his permission. Must men always be in charge? He had the Madonna-Whore complex. I was meant
     to be unlike all other females: the one clean woman in his life.
    That was not my idea of love. He was wanting to punish me for my own sexuality.
    Eamonn interrupted my thoughts. “How are you feeling?”
    This kind, considerate companion was wondering why women bothered to go to bed with men if sexual ecstasy was this hard. It
     had never occurred to his clerical mind that a woman’s rhythms could be so different from a man’s.
    “Never felt better,” I answered.
    In the next hour, as I lay contentedly on my back and he stroked me all over, I felt safe to return to painful memories. I
     needed to bring them into consciousness to be healed of them.
    I found out that Steven had run his father’s candy store in Brooklyn from age nine. The store was full of girlie magazines.
     It wasn’t Steven’s fault, but this did him no good at all. I had to be the one pure snowy thing in his life to make up for
     the guilt he felt for all that smut. That was why if I showed the least sign of sensuousness, he raged at me.
    He spent hours in the bathroom with glossy magazines, cutting up the women in them like a doctor doing surgery. Out of the
     prize pieces he created his perfect woman—flawless eyes, nose, breasts, legs, thighs…
    I was unworthy because my skin was not silky enough, my nose not perfectly shaped, I had freckles. When I examined myself
     in the mirror, a pimple seemed bigger than my chin. This was another reason why I like dim soft lights and why I have to shower
     in the dark.
    Why didn’t I leave him? As well ask why a victim is transfixed by the rearing face of a cobra? The pious will never understand
     that evil is more fascinating than good, that some people sin in order to go to hell. And with the same single-minded fervor
     as the virtuous strive to get to heaven.
    Often I thought murder was the holiest of deeds: my only defense against Steven would be to stab him in his sleep. But when
     he saw that I might leave him, he rekindled the old romance with passionate sex. Soon, of course, he was back to withdrawing,
     titillating while deliberately not fulfilling me. He was a torturer.
    Eamonn, my dear kind Eamonn, was asking me whether I was any nearer to fulfillment, and to encourage him, I nodded yes. Was
     not this true fulfillment, to be loved and not tormented?
    After Steven’s baby was stillborn and I was suffering from panic attacks—I was down to eighty-nine pounds—he was once
     more very sweet. He could afford to be because I was broken. I would not disgrace him or rebel against him.
    Why did I not pour out my heart to Daddy?