Free Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk

Marjorie. She was as sweet
     to him as ever, and they continued to see each other. But Marjorie’s conscience troubled
     her less and less about dating new boys. George was losing his two great advantages
     with Marjorie, advantages which often are enough to bring about marriage if nothing
     interferes. When she was fifteen he had bent down to her from the celestial altitude
     of twenty; that altitude, however, had dwindled, as Marjorie rapidly matured and George
     slowed near his final level. And he had been the first man to thrill her with kisses,
     so the ancient universal spell of sex had in Marjorie’s eyes come to halo George Drobes
     personally. George’s one remaining chance lay in nailing the girl down while she was
     still under that fragile delusion; and a dim sense of this must have been behind his
     desperate Villa Marlene gamble. Penelope’s breakdown lost George much more than a
     means of transportation. It deprived him of a dark front seat. Since Marjorie was
     no girl to neck in hallways or on park benches, George was stymied.
    The single shred of hope for him was that Marjorie as yet hadn’t necked with anyone
     else. But this was not from want of opportunity or candidates. Evening after evening
     she was finding herself in dark front seats more luxurious than Penelope’s, with the
     old problem on her hands. It was delightful to be taken to the best dancing places,
     to be able to chatter knowingly about the Biltmore and the Roosevelt and the St. Regis,
     about Guy Lombardo and Hal Kemp and Glen Gray; but in the end it all came to the same
     thing. Central Park West and the Bronx were no different in this respect. Marjorie
     found the sameness of boys at the end of an evening rather comical—the heavy breathing,
     the popping eyes, the grasping damp hands, the hoarse unconvincing romantic mumbling—but
     after innocently laughing at them a couple of times, she realized what a mistake that
     was. It was too effectively discouraging. They drove her home in a fury and never
     spoke to her again. The idea was to fend off the advances, not the boys. Moral indignation
     was hopeless; it was like getting angry at the weather. Every boy tried.
    Moreover, Marjorie couldn’t help feeling that they had some small right on their side.
     They were entertaining her lavishly. Were they to have no reward? In theory, she knew,
     her company for the evening was supposed to be the reward. Theory often required some
     squaring with facts. Under continual pressure, she soon worked out two rules:
    No necking at all;
No kiss on the first two dates; thereafter, one kiss for good night and maybe one
     more to cut off prolonged begging.
    This policy seemed to work inasmuch as the boys grumbled and complained and whined,
     but usually called her up again after a few days. However, she acquired a reputation
     for being “frigid.” Sooner or later every boy brought out the word to salve his self-esteem
     at being fobbed off with one kiss. The diagnosis didn’t trouble her. In the Hunter
     lunchroom she had listened to an enormous amount of conversation about necking. She
     knew that girls who necked freely were thrown over by boys just as often as those
     who didn’t. Marjorie had about reached the conclusion that boys were on the whole
     more fascinated by sex withheld than by sex granted; and since this is nearly the
     sum of wisdom on the subject of young love, she managed for the time being to keep
     out of trouble.
    The one exception in all this, oddly enough, was Sandy Goldstone. Though he took her
     out more often than the others, he did not even try to kiss her good night. Marjorie
     was grateful at first for his unusual restraint. Then she began to wonder whether
     it wasn’t a gambit of dark villainy. Then, when he persisted in this genial undemanding
     conduct, she grew a bit annoyed. The way things were, chivalry seemed to require a
     man to make some attempt at necking, however brief and formal. However, he