GEORGE
415
"She held them off with her determination, stepped out of her
slip and bent to unfasten her stockings from her girdle. She went
fast. There was no haste in it, but no delay. She kicked off her shoes,
rolled off her stockings, and letting her underpants fall round her
bare feet, stepped out of them, moving over the heap of clothes to
the center of the room. She was now in her girdle and brassiere. She
also had a string of pearls round her neck; I hadn't noticed them
before.
"Our host and hostess came running. They had long since
abandoned their function, forgotten the drinks, the crackers and
cheese. This revived them. Mary, a big woman, stood over Gloria,
as though to hide her nakedness, and Aaron stood by, divided in
his
own lechery between a sense of responsibility and a desire to peep.
This was true of
all
the men. I make no exception of myself (although
I have the advantage over the rest while I'm telling the story).
Gloria brushed Mary aside and stepped in front of her. This was the
one difficulty her determination had to face; she made it, and her
sense of power, of sheer will having its way, which I am sure had
never been so great in all her life, only gained from the encounter.
Off came her brassiere, this, too, flung on the floor. At the last she
was having a little trouble wriggling out of her girdle, and all the
while she was peering about the room, probably to locate Phil. She's
quite nearsighted. Then she stood naked.
"I don't know if you've ever seen a woman naked under such
circumstances. You get a curious impression-first of all, surprise.
If
you've never before seen the woman's body it surprises you-the
actual moment of nakedness is startling, that's true in every case. Now
there was a gasp--and silence.
In
this silence, the record which had
been playing while Phil and Martha danced still ran on, and you
could hear the kids crying in their room. But the moment passed, it
became a fact. She stood with full and hanging breasts, the necklace
dividing them, on stout thighs, dimpled at the buttocks and wider
across the hips than you would have expected from her clothes. Her
pubic hair was oddly at an angle and several shades darker than the
hair of her head. But it wasn't only her nakedness that was startling
-it was the fact that she had it all to herself. An absolute difference
- the rest of us were dressed.
It
was such an odd thing-like drag-
ging mortality into the open. No, hardly that. I can't describe it, I
