Dan's first date with Renny was, as agreed, at an Indian movie. Renny kept up a commentary, predicting exactly what was going to happen at the end of each song-and-dance number.
"Have you seen it before?" asked Dan.
"No, but they all have the same plot. It's just a vehicle for the singing and dancing."
After the movie they went to a coffee shop, and chatted for over an hour, until Renny reminded him she had to be up early in the morning. They went to the building where she shared an apartment with three other Indian girls. Her part was a tiny box room with no window, and was barely big enough for a single bed and a small dresser. Deepa, the older and worldly-wise leaseholder, had a bigger room, and two twins Isha and Adhya shared the third. On the way there from the subway station, Dan took her hand; she did not pull it away. In fact, she felt a warm glow spreading through her body at his touch. It was the first time she had been touched by a man since she was a small child, and she was surprised and delighted. She was nineteen, and had never been kissed. When they were outside her building Dan asked if he could see her again; she readily agreed, and decided to herself that the next time they met, she would let Dan kiss her.
The following Sunday afternoon, they went to the coffee shop beforehand, and talked so long they missed the start of the movie they had planned to see. So they went for a walk in the park. They sat down on a bench in a quiet area, and Renny pulled Dan to her and kissed him. He slipped his tongue between her lips, and when she opened her mouth to him it went inside. She had never felt anything like it. It seemed that her entire inside was turned to warm oil, and the pleasure she felt was intense. Any lingering ideas from her upbringing of "being a good Malayalee girl," "keeping herself clean for her husband" were forgotten, and they stayed like that for a long time, then went back to Renny's. They drank tea and chatted with the other girls for a while, then went to her tiny room and continued. She had told Dan that she was a virgin, and he did not want to push her to do anything she did not want herself. She would certainly have allowed him to do anything if he had pressed her, but natural shyness kept them chaste -- for that time anyway.
After he had gone, Renny went to bed, but stayed awake for a long time, thinking. Her attitude was hard for her to understand. She both wanted sex, and was terrified by the thought. The possibility of becoming pregnant in her circumstances frightened her. She felt, however, that Dan was a good man who could be trusted to be kind and generous to her, and she was already a little in love with him.
On her way home from work the following day, she went into a bookshop and bought a book entitled Sex Guide for Teenage Girls. She was nearly twenty, but thought to herself, "I'm as innocent as an American thirteen-year-old. More so, probably." There was a lot of useful stuff in the book about contraception, avoiding STIs etc., but it also had what she really wanted to know -- how did you go about it anyway? What was a "blowjob?" Why would a man want her to sit on his face, as a workman had shouted at her the week before? The book had all the answers. She called up some porn sites on her tablet, but thought the scenarios very unlikely, and the men's members seemed to be huge. How could they fit? Were all men like that? Was Dan? Wouldn't it hurt? The women seemed to like it, but perhaps they were just faking it because they were being paid. Nonetheless, she felt herself getting excited when she watched them. The book had explained about masturbation, and after a few tries she had her first orgasm.
Perhaps she could ask Deepa about it. Deepa had regular sex with her boyfriend Tony; she had often heard their orgiastic cries through the thin partition wall. And terrible puns about "Going Deepa." One evening when the twins were out, and she and Deepa were sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea and eating cookies, she plucked up the courage to ask her.
"What's it like to have sex with a man?" she asked.
Deepa smiled.
"With the right man, it's heavenly. When he kisses me and strokes my body, suckles my breasts and fingers my yoni, it's a feeling like nothing else. Then when he enters me, it becomes hot and impatient and unbearably exciting. More and more until the climax. Oh, Renny, there's no pleasure to match it. Are you planning to do it with that guy, Dan?"
