CHAPTER THREE: A CHANGE OF MIND

I often went about town with my two women and would take especial pleasure in having them sit either side of me, whether in public or private. In public, people would sometimes stare curiously or even disapprovingly at me and remark to themselves that I was a bigamist. But, in private, I was completely free from what other people thought and able to behave as I liked, or almost so. For there were of course limitations as to what I could permit myself to do with Julia when her mother was around, and even when she wasn't. Mostly the three of us would just sit together of an evening, after I had finished my day's literary toil, and talk or watch television. But sex was never wholly absent from the proceedings, since, with a female on either side of me, it was in the order of things for me to caressingly roam a hand over certain parts of their respective persons.

Initially, for a number of months after I had 'taken' Julia's virginity artificially, my sexual relations with her continued to be artificial. If we were all three seated on the big settee in front of the television, and both the women were leaning against me with their legs drawn-up across my thighs and their respective rumps facing outwards, as was often the case, my hands would never behave in exactly the same fashion towards Julia as towards her mother. With Carmel, for instance, the hand nearest to her would perhaps delve under her blouse in order to caress the smooth skin of her back or, assuming I could get it up her skirt, push a way through the legs of her panties with a view to stimulating her clit. With Julia, however, the hand dedicated to caressing her would never venture beneath clothing to the actual flesh, but would invariably remain segregated from it, even if I had delved under her skirt or dress and come into contact with her panties. In that event, I would simply caress her crotch or a part of her rump through their material, which acted as a kind of artificial shield for her. I must have been inhibited, initially, by the long-standing stepfather/stepdaughter-like relationship that had existed between us, even though she was far from being my stepdaughter in reality, or indeed in practice. I obviously didn't want to compromise myself, especially with Carmel present.

But a hot-blooded young woman can't be kept at bay for ever, nor be satisfied by artificial stimuli alone, and I soon realized that Julia was becoming more demanding of me as her sexual feelings deepened. Carmel realized it too, and one day, when, for once, the two of us were completely alone together, she said: "Joe, my daughter will require more than the indirect caresses you casually bestow upon her, if you wish to retain her sexual respect. There are, I'm sure, quite a number of young men who have carnal designs on her and who would be prepared to provide her with more substantial satisfactions in your stead. You can't expect her to remain a kind of sexual accessory to you for life. So either enlarge your carnal relations with her or ... break them off altogether!"

These words sounded slightly sinister to me. For I knew exactly what Carmel was hinting at. And yet, I was still opposed to marriage, if only because I preferred the idea of remaining a free-electron equivalent in the company of a pair of quasi-electron equivalents. Marriage, however, would simply transform me into a bound-electron equivalent and the woman I married into a proton equivalent. Was I to relapse into an atomic integrity, I who looked forward to the day when electron equivalents would be freed, once and for all, from atomic constraints? It seemed unlikely that I would relapse into such a thing, and yet I was becoming increasingly fond of Julia and would have preferred to retain her sexual interest than oblige her to look for someone else. So I said to Carmel: "Since I haven't married you, why should I marry Julia? If she wishes to conceive a child by me, let her do so without recourse to marriage. I'd no more dream of deserting her than ... deserting you."

Carmel looked grave and retorted: "But you can't make her pregnant with that bloody vibrator!"

I nodded in agreement and said: "Then I shall have to do it with the aid of that mechanical copulator recently invented by an acquaintance of mine. By depositing a quantity of my sperm in the device, I'll be able to make her pregnant indirectly and, as it were, artificially - without recourse to physical contact."

"Do you seriously suppose she'll be satisfied to have you indirectly making love to her through that mechanical contraption?" Carmel retorted, somewhat sceptically and even angrily.

"She'll damned well have to be!" I sternly replied. "For I can't bring myself to actually have sex with her - I who am at least twenty-five years her fucking senior!"

At that moment, Julia strode into the room and we felt obliged to terminate our heated conversation. Nor did we take it up again until some months later, by which time, however, my attitude had distinctly changed, partly because of Julia's refusal, in the meantime, to be party to my former plans. Rebelling against my artificiality, she had threatened to desert me if I persisted in my intentions and, as I couldn't bear the prospect of being left with just the one woman, I gave-in to her and resignedly set about the task of making her pregnant through conventional means. It transpired, however, that I was unable to do so. For I had become well-nigh impotent, over the years, without realizing it, since contraceptives had always come between me and the possibility of Carmel becoming pregnant. My ejaculations just weren't forceful or copious enough to reach into Julia's womb and cause a pregnancy, and nothing she could do or say by way of seducing me had any appreciable effect on their outcome. Eventually it began to dawn on her that the only way she could become pregnant through me was indirectly, with the aid of the mechanical copulator, and, although she was fundamentally against the idea, her growing love for me had begun to sway her in that revolutionary direction. Thus it transpired that, no sooner than three months after she had categorically refused to countenance the prospect of an artificially-induced pregnancy, she changed her mind and agreed to give it a try. Naturally, I would still continue to give her direct sex, the way she wanted it, but she now knew that such sex could never lead to the fulfilment of her dreams. That, on the contrary, would require the services of the special machine I had promised to obtain, and once she was astride it, there could be no question of the enclosed sperm failing to reach its target! There would be a bull's-eye every fucking time, with the virtual guarantee of a pregnancy in due course. Why therefore shouldn't she, probably the first woman in the world to lose her virginity artificially, now become among the first to acquire a pregnancy artificially - through the recently-invented penetrative contrivance which mechanically mimicked coitus? Besides, now that she had fallen deeply in love with me, what choice did she have?

I smiled my satisfaction at her about-face and assured her that, come what may, I would never desert her, even though, through moral compunction, I couldn't ever marry her. A free-electron equivalent I intended to remain, even with two quasi-electron equivalents dogging my steps and, seemingly, just waiting for me to trip up!