The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath Page B

depressed.
                    Buddy seemed hurt I didn’t say
anything. “I think you ought to get used to me like this,” he said. “Now let me
see you.”
                    But undressing in front of Buddy
suddenly appealed to me about as much as having my Posture Picture taken at
college, where you have to stand naked in front of a camera, knowing all the
time that a picture of you stark naked, both full view and side view, is going
into the college gym files to be marked A B C or D depending on how straight
you are.
                    “Oh, some other time,” I said
                    “ All right.” Buddy got dressed
again.
                    Then we kissed and hugged a
while and I felt a little better. I drank the rest of the Dubonnet and sat
cross-legged at the end of Buddy’s bed and asked for a comb. I began to comb my
hair down over my face so Buddy couldn’t see it. Suddenly I said, “Have you
ever had an affair with anyone, Buddy?”
                    I don’t know what made me say
it, the words just popped out of my mouth. I never thought for one minute that
Buddy Willard would have an affair with anyone. I expected him to say, “No, I
have been saving myself for when I get married to somebody pure and a virgin
like you.”
                    But Buddy didn’t say anything,
he just turned pink.
                    “Well, have you?”
                    “What do you mean, an affair?”
Buddy asked then in a hollow voice.
                    “You know, have you ever gone to
bed with anyone?” I kept rhythmically combing the hair down over the side of my
face nearest to Buddy, and I could feel the little electric filaments clinging
to my hot cheeks and I wanted to shout, “Stop, stop, don’t tell me, don’t say
anything.” But I didn’t, I just kept still.
                    “Well, yes, I have,” Buddy said
finally.
                    I almost fell over. From the
first night Buddy Willard kissed me and said I must go out with a lot of boys,
he made me feel I was much more sexy and experienced than he was and that
everything he did like hugging and kissing and petting was simply what I made
him feel like doing out of the blue, he couldn’t help it and didn’t knowhow it
came about.
                    Now I saw he had only been
pretending all this time to be so innocent.
                    “Tell me about it.” I combed my
hair slowly over and over, feeling the teeth of the comb dig into my cheek at
every stroke. “Who was it?”
                    Buddy seemed relieved I wasn’t
angry. He even seemed relieved to have somebody to tell about how he was
seduced.
                    Of course, somebody had seduced
Buddy, Buddy hadn’t started it and it wasn’t really his fault. It was this
waitress at the hotel he worked at as a busboy the last summer at Cape Cod.
Buddy had noticed her staring at him queerly and shoving her breasts up against
him in the confusion of the kitchen, so finally one day he asked her what the
trouble was and she looked him straight in the eye and said, “I want you.”
                    “Served up with parsley?” Buddy
had laughed innocently.
                    “No,” she had said. “Some
night.”
                    And that’s how Buddy had lost
his pureness and his virginity.
                    At first I thought he must have
slept with the waitress only the once, but when I asked how many times, just to
make sure, he said he couldn’t remember but a couple of times a week for the
rest of the summer. I multiplied three by ten and got thirty, which seemed
beyond all reason.
                    After that something in me just
froze