*Historical note: Up until the mid 20th century, doctors commonly diagnosed women with 'female hysteria.' These physicians estimated 25% to 75% of the population suffered from the condition. Symptoms included faintness, nervousness, insomnia, shortness of breath, irritability, a "tendency to cause trouble" and sexual desire. We recognize this today simply as sexual frustration. A common prescription of the time was to engage in coitus as a form of relief. In a time where the depths of sexuality, particularly women's sexuality, was not well understood, this could sometimes exacerbate the condition. Another alternative was to masturbate the patients to orgasm. Physicians considered this to be an unenviable and arduous task and midwives were often employed to perform the duty. As a side note, Rachel Maines of John Hopkins University has hypothesized the need for this type of stimulation was the reason for the invention of the electric vibrator. The Tony nominated play 'In the Next Room' dramatized this hypothesis.
*****
New York
Summer, 1910
Johnathan shook his head. "No, I won't permit it."
"But Johnathan," Emma said. "I really want to ride a roller coaster."
"I said no and I meant it."
They swayed in their seats as the New York and Sea Beach Line train rounded a bend. Emma watched Johnathan straighten his back in his matching peach ice-cream-colored suit and followed his gaze to what was happening outside their train car. Through the smudged windows, Emma could see the dusty streets of Brooklyn.
Their car was packed with people. It was a hot and muggy day and with all the bodies in the car it made it all the hotter and smellier. She and Johnathan had been fortunate enough to find seats. Open windows gave them a little relief as long as the train was moving. The train car buzzed with excitement. Everyone talked about what they intended to do once they reached Coney Island.
Emma brushed bits of soot off her pleated white blouse and navy walking skirt as the train came to a stop. A trio of street toughs boarded the trolley. Her husband and a few other men gave them a wary gaze. Emma was still thinking about the coaster to pay them much mind, though. She decided to give another plea as the train wobbled forward.
"How can we go to Coney and not ride a coaster?" she asked. "Johnathan, I've never gone before. I want to tell all my friends I at least rode a roller coaster."
"They are too dangerous and besides, it's what the doctor ordered," he said. "A roller coaster may excite your 'condition'."
Her mouth dropped. Why he-! The doctor never said any such thing! Johnathan was just making this up. He knew good and well what the doctor had prescribed. And what he prescribed certainly didn't help.
Johnathan patted her hand and softened his countenance. "A stroll along the beach is what you need, my dear. The salt air and ocean waves will invigorate you and improve your condition. Trust me. Then afterward we'll have a fine dinner at Feltmans."
"I'd like to try a hot dog," she said.
"Really, my dear? When you could eat at Feltmans?"
"If you think it would spoil our appetite, we could share one."
"I don't want a hot dog." Johnathan straightened his straw hat. "I've had one and trust me, you aren't missing anything. It's just some poor quality sausage wrapped in a soggy bun."
Just because he didn't like it didn't mean she wouldn't, she wanted to say. But one battle at a time.
"If not a roller coaster, perhaps another ride?" she asked. "The Steeple Chase perhaps?"
"I was thinking Dreamland. There are some educational shows and more gentle rides there you will enjoy."
She turned away. She heard Dreamland was boring. She worked her jaw and tried not to look at him. Her first trip to Coney and she'd have none of the rides she had so often heard about.
Johnathan waggled his eyebrows and twitched his mustache at her. "I was thinking we could go on the Tunnel of Love."
She frowned. Tunnel of Love indeed. Johnathan was always randy. The doctor's prescription for her condition, coitus, hadn't help any. Just last night, Johnathan had come to her, his cock poking out at her from his long johns like a curved yellow squash. After a cursory ask for permission, he entered her, her knees up in the air as he rutted away. She had enjoyed how his pubic bone rubbed against a tiny spot between her legs and sent little waves of thrill through her body, but as always, in a couple of minutes, he was spent. Afterward, despite what the doctor believed, she found herself experiencing her condition. She was tense and unable to sleep.
As Jonathan snored away like a bear in a cave, she couldn't stop thinking of the little thrills Jonathan had given her. That one little spot. Perhaps she could produce the sensation on her own accord? That wouldn't be proper. But could it really hurt if she did it just once? Giving a quick look at Johnathan, she carefully inserted a finger under her drawers and searched out the little spot. It was a hard little nob at the top of her folds which were coming moist with dew. Touching it sent a shiver through her legs and abdomen. She couldn't help give a sigh. Johnathan woke with a snort.
"Emma?"
Her hand shot out of her drawers and she pretended to swat at a fly. She didn't answer him and acted like she was asleep. In a few moments he was back to snoring. She had lost her nerve to touch herself again and soon she had a terrible headache. It was yet another night's sleep lost to her 'condition.'
In the morning, Johnathan came up with the idea they go to Coney that weekend.
"It's just what you need!" he exclaimed.
At first she had been excited, until he told her there would be no roller coaster ride in their plans. Now, it sounded like it was just going to end up being a very long, very hot day.
She pulled at the bag hanging from her shoulder, dug around past her parasol, and pulled out her latest book, Kate Chopin's The Awakening. She could feel Johnathan's disapproving frown as she opened it to her bookmark.
"Must you read that?" he said in a whisper. "Here? In public?"
Emma felt the sudden steel in her spine. He could take away the roller coaster and the hot dog, but he wasn't taking away her book. She pretended to be engrossed in her reading to answer. He mumbled something before he unrolled the newspaper under his arm and flapped it open.
It had taken her half a year to find The Awakening. Banned in most states and counties, she had found it by chance. She mentioned wanting to read it to a retired librarian friend at the Henderson's Fourth of July celebration. A few days later, Emma found a little package wrapped in brown paper delivered to her door.
When Johnathan first saw the book in her possession, he hadn't said anything, probably because he hadn't recognize the title. He came home about a week later, though, furious. One of the neighborhood gossips had informed him of the book's contents. He demanded to have it at once. Emma refused to surrender it.
"What's a man to think—his wife reading a book whose premise condones adultery?" Johnathan demanded.
Emma wouldn't back down. "It's just a fiction, Johnathan, not a moral treatise."
They had argued, but in the end, she remembered with some satisfaction, she had prevailed.
The book soothed her. She loved Mrs. Chopin's prose and could identify with the book's protagonist, Edna, and her loveless marriage to Mr. Pontellier. Chopin's descriptions of New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico made her want to travel there. She couldn't understand why Edna had become so infatuated with Robert, the story's love interest, though. He seemed so juvenile and tepid.
As she turned the page, a flash caught her eye. Emma looked up and saw one of the toughs rolling a nickel across his knuckles. She became fixated on it, watching the coin as it drifted across his fingers.
When she looked up from the roving coin to its owner, she found herself staring again, this time at two beautiful eyes, shiny and bright as a child's marbles. They were staring back at her.
The young man touched the tip of his flat cap and gave her a little smile-like he knew a secret about her that she didn't.
She returned the smile politely then returned to her book, but she found she was still thinking about the tough. The way he was smiling told her he had been listening to she and Johnathan's conversation. Hmm, he was handsome, yes, but rude and without good manners.
She could feel his eyes still on her. She found herself wanting to disappear into the seat or wall of the train, away from him, to hide. Then why did she want to look at him again?
She chanced another glance.
Despite his worn clothes and cat-like slouch, his face was clean shaven and pure. He was wearing a vest over his white shirt, which was rolled up to his forearms. They looked nice and strong, like steel cables. There was a scar under his very lovely lips.
An unexpected shock struck her in the pit of her stomach and zipped down between her legs. She involuntarily rubbed her thighs together and felt moisture.
She quickly turned back to her book. She wasn't reading anymore, though. She had forgotten all about Edna and her infatuation with the tepid Robert. She wanted to keep looking at the handsome tough.
She pushed a stray ringlet of hair into her broad brimmed hat. What was happening here? She was a married woman. Her days of flirtations were over. But when she looked at him, she felt a tiny stab of joy in her heart: the pricking of Cupid's arrow. She hadn't experienced that in . . . well, she couldn't quite remember. But she was married now. Shouldn't those types of feelings just go away? And what about that shock? That delicious little shock?
She lifted her eyes again and once more felt Cupid's little stab. He was still eying her, the coin rippling over his fingers.
"Here we are," Johnathan said taking her by the arm and breaking the spell.
The train slowed into the station and everyone disembarked. Emma stepped down onto the platform, concentrating on her balance among the bustle of the passengers. When she finally looked up, she stopped, stunned.
*****
She had entered a world where everything whirled, dazzled, and moved.
Dozens of buildings extended down a boardwalk and pressed down upon each other. Some were tall, some were squat, some had high turrets and colonnades. Some looked like palaces or temples, but all were smeared with peeling white paint and plastered with bright colored signs advertising amusements for 5 or 10 cents. Ticket barkers cajoled and music whistled out of brass horns and organs of calliopes and orchestrations. Sea birds darted overhead. Smells of salt air, buttered popcorn, and sputtering hot dogs filled her senses and made her mouth water. A terrified thrill went up her spine as she heard the screams and cries from a nearby roller coaster. The boardwalk rumbled like thunder under her feet.
And the people! Everywhere people. So many. . . people.
There were men with somber faces, trying not to look too impressed at all the wonders around them. Women's broad brimmed hats swiveled and turned like the so-many wondrous rides. Children clung to their parents' hands with gaping mouths and round eyes. One child with an ice cream-smeared face and a soggy, empty cone in her clenched fist, dragged behind her father wailing and stomping her feet.
Emma remembered a recent newspaper headline, and it suddenly made sense to her: 'Three Hundred Thousand People in Coney Island Yesterday. Twenty-three Children Lost.'
"Stay close," Johnathan said as he surveyed the scene like a field marshal forming his battle plan. "I don't want to lose you in this mob."
He moved forward, brandishing his bamboo cane to make way. Emma followed after him, feeling herself becoming just a particle in the crowd.
The roller coaster was so near. She could see it now with its tall crisscrossed wooden beams and a cart full of people rolling up and down its steel tracks. But Johnathan pointed his cane in the opposite direction. "This way, dear."
They passed a slender ticket barker, standing next to a strong man game.
"C'mon gents! Step right up! Test yer strength!" the barker shouted. "Which one of youse are the men and which of youse are the boys?"
He spotted Johnathan.
"You, sir. Why don't you impress your lady with some of your masculine virility?"
Johnathan looked at the game, intrigued, then turned to Emma. "Shall I?"
He didn't wait for her reply. He handed her his hat and cane, walked over, and took the mallet being extended from the barker's hand.
