Free Candy by Terry Southern Page A

you’ve said about me. I have been holding myself in all my life. As you say, I was brought up to look on sex as an evil and forbidden subject, and I suppose that’s why I’ve always been fascinated by its symbols—the body of this young woman, for instance. But how about you?”
    “What about me?”
    “Well, how do you feel when you look at her—you who are from a younger generation, and who have made a deliberate effort to rid yourself of old-fashioned notions?”
    Krankeit looked at Candy blankly.
    “She’d look like Marilyn Monroe in that calendar picture,” Dr. Dunlap pointed out, “if she didn’t have any clothes on.”
    “If you’d read my book, you’d understand how I feel about these things,” Krankeit said. “In the fifth chapter of Masturbation Now! I state expressly that heterosexual lovemaking is the root of all neuroses, a shabby illusion which misleads the ego, that we must endeavor to keep it in its true place—as an aid, and adjunct to masturbation, which is the only sex-mode that permits complete fulfillment and mental health.”
    Dr. Dunlap listened with utmost seriousness. “It certainly was a courageous book,” he said, looking at Krankeit with paternal admiration. “In it you defy all the conventional sex mores.”
    Krankeit smiled complacently and said: “Of course, for someone like you, who hasn’t got any sex-orientation, heterosexuality is the logical starting place—it’s certainly better than nothing. Theoretically, there’s nothing wrong at all with that impulse you have to look at this girl’s body—it’s even a very good thing that you’ve finally gotten up nerve to do it.”
    Nervily, Dunlap turned and looked at Candy as she lay stretched out on her side on the couch. Just then she sighed, and rolled on her back as before. Her sweet knees lifted and her skirt slid back so that the white frilled V of her panties showed again. The righteousness quickly drained from Dunlap’s eyes and was replaced by a hard, corrupted glint.
    “Of course,” Krankeit went on, “for myself, I’ve never had much time for those things—too busy with my work.”
    Dunlap said nothing. He was keeping his eyes trained on the scalloped V, beneath which pulsed Candy’s precious little lamb-pit.
    “Yes, first there was med school, and then my research and writing . . . I’ve had little time for anything else . . . no romance, no family life . . . I’ve missed that though—the family life.”
    “Is that so?” said Dunlap, who had been paying no attention whatever and hadn’t the least idea what had just been said.
    “Yes, it is. When you spoke about feeling like my Dad a little while ago, I couldn’t help being a bit touched. You see—I never knew my own father.” A slight huskiness came into Krankeit’s voice as he said this.
    Dunlap said nothing. He was stooping over slightly in Candy’s direction and staring at her intently.
    “To get back to what I was saying,” continued Krankeit, “you’re terribly jammed up. This mechanism you’ve contrived to keep your sexual lust a secret from the world, and from you yourself, is causing you more trouble than you realize. That’s why I decided it was all right for you to look at Miss Christian’s legs—it’s exactly what you need.”
    “Exactly what I need,” echoed Dr. Dunlap like a zombie, and moved a few inches closer to the luscious form on the couch with his fingertips twitching spasmodically.
    “It’s a thousand times better for you to satisfy that sort of desire, than to fight it down and have it haunt your Unconscious for years to come,” said Krankeit persuasively.
    “Dunlap . . . I say, DUNLAP!!”
    Dr. Dunlap had quickly stepped to Candy and he was wrestling off her panties in a veritable frenzy. “I thought you said it was ‘exactly what I needed,’” he mumbled, confounded now.
    “Ah yes, but only up to the point where it doesn’t interfere with some other party. That’s an important