Jack looked out through the wide picture window at the pretty stretch of desert separating his house from Peggy's, streaked with yellow light from the setting winter sun. As long as he could remember Jack had been picking his way through the prickly pears to visit the sprawling compound where Peggy and her mother lived, with its guest house for her great grandmother and its grand pool overhung by old eucalyptus trees. Peggy was home for Christmas and Jack was looking forward to seeing her after the social complications of his first semester at the local university. He had fallen in with a crowd of medical students, and fallen in love, or so he imagined, with one of them.
But while they enjoyed each other's company and conversation at the parties he was included in, and although he thought he had made his feelings clear and thought he perceived some reciprocation, they hadn't moved to what seemed to him to be the logical next step, having sex. And he wasn't sure whether the hesitation came from him or from her. Although generally a talkative and gregarious person, Jack didn't know how to talk about sex, or how to initiate a conversation about it. Any move that came to mind seemed crass and at odds with the demands of friendship. He was, in fact, thoroughly confused about the relationship between friendship and sex. A confusion that was understandable because Jack, to his embarrassment at the age of 19, was a virgin.
These were the thoughts that occupied his mind as he made his way out the back gate and followed the winding path through the saguaros to Peggy's house.
"Jack, lovely to see you, here, help me with these cheese crisps," said Peggy's mother Ruth as he entered the kitchen door.
"Take this tray and pass it around the guests in the living room."
Every space in the kitchen was occupied by cutting boards piled with raw vegetables, plates of cheese, bowls of tortilla chips and guacamole, trays of filo dough triangles ready to be put into the oven, loaves of crusty French bread, large glass jugs of eggnog--the usual provisions for the Barron's annual holiday party. Ruth, a short woman with sharp eyes and a brisk, friendly manner, was head of the psychology department. A crowd of her colleagues was already emitting a buzz of conversation from the living room as they milled around the bar where Peggy was serving wine. Jack and Peggy had grown up serving as waiters at these parties, enjoying the occasional sip as they got older and joining the lively intellectual debates. It was a world that Jack felt comfortable with.
Peggy ran across the room to greet Jack as he entered. He put down his tray to hug her, registering in the back of his mind the warm press of her breasts against his chest.
"Vivian, Kay, and Lowell are coming over later for the after party in my room," she whispered. "Lowell is bringing some dope."
"Great, we can all sit around listening to Bob Dylan and getting stoned."
"Not likely. You know how I feel about Bob Dylan."
"One of these days I'll change your mind."
The old familiar argument was interrupted by Ruth. "Peggy, get back to your post! Jack, come in here and get another tray!"
For the next few hours the tide of the party surged from living room to pool to kitchen and back to living room, whirls of conversation spinning up and dying down, the flotsam and jetsam of empty bottles and food scraps accumulating at the margins.
Later that night, after Ruth had gone to bed, the five friends were sitting in Peggy's room, drinking wine, smoking dope, and listening to Bob Dylan. Peggy was sitting on her bed next to Lowell, Jack was lying on the floor with his head in Kay's lap, and Vivian was sitting at Peggy's desk, chair swiveled around to face the others.
Jack has been holding forth on the subject of Bob Dylan's qualities as a singer and poet.
"He can't sing worth a damn. He's always out of tune," said Vivian.
"Oh no," said Jack, taking another hit of the joint that was being passed around, "he has complete control over his voice. And his lyrics are a sort of abstract poetry, beautiful and mysterious."
"Fucked if I can see it," said Vivian.
"Speaking of fucked... " said Kay, grinning.
"Oh no, not another orgy," Vivian groaned.
"When did you guys have an orgy? And how come I wasn't invited?" complained Jack.
"Last weekend," said Peggy. "A bunch of us were hanging out around my pool. You were studying, remember?"
"Yeah, well, nobody told me there was going to be an orgy."
"It wasn't planned. People just sort of started doing stuff. I stayed out of it."
"What sort of stuff? You mean, full sex? Why did you stay out of it?"
"I don't know. It just seemed too impersonal, I guess."
"Poor Jack," said Kay. "But really, I don't think it would have been good for your first time."
They all knew that Jack was a virgin. It was something they had discussed endlessly on drunken evenings in their last year of high school. The truth was that Jack, much as he wanted sex, also shied away from it when the opportunity stared him in the face, as it had on more than one occasion. He had a private core that opened up under the warm glow of easy friendship but retreated when the air was crackling with the lightning of sexual desire.
Kay understood this, and bent over Jack with sweet enigmatic smile, her long brown hair drooping further and further, until their lips met, as if by chance, a gentle hint.
"Maybe we should give Jack an early Christmas present."
Peggy looked longingly from the bed, shivering at the thought of those lips touching. She held a secret desire to be Jack's first, but saw the sweet binding chemistry of reciprocity building between Jack and Kay. They kept kissing, their stoned hands wandering over their bodies as their buzzing lips remained locked together.
"Yeah, that's the sort of stuff they were doing," said Peggy. She shrugged her shoulders wistfully and then turned to Lowell with a wicked smile. "Want to try?" She put her arms around his neck and pulled him down on to the bed, on top of her.
Kay lifted Jack's head off her lap, swung herself over him, pinned his arms to the ground and rubbed her crotch against his. Jack was liminally aware of his stoned state, that Kay was a childhood friend, the way they had wrestled together as kids, this new thing that was happening as he raised his lips to hers and felt his cock harden against her crotch, the sighed "oh yes" that left her throat, his tongue probing her open wet mouth, her tongue responding.
Vivian's gaze was soft and bright. She stared at the two couples grinding against each other, still clothed, thinking the unthinkable, and moved her hand between her legs.
"Um, guys, you're not really going to do it, are you?"
Lowell and Peggy stopped their grinding and looked around sheepishly.
Kay said, "Give me a few seconds, I'm almost there," and continued moving on the hard bulge in Jack's jeans until she arched back with a deep groan. "Oh, that was a good one. I needed that. That's a nice big cock you've got there Jack." She looked over at Vivian, eyes still veiled with lust, and answered her with a little shake of her head.
"Actually, I can't give Jack his present now, at least it would be a bit messy. I'm having my period."
"I can," said Peggy.
