CHAPTER 1
Valerie
I looked at what was supposed to be my bridal lingerie, laid out on the bed. I knew I couldn’t put it on. Not because of any issue with the sizing—let alone because of any thought that I didn’t want to marry Chris.
No. Because of what I knew lacy underthings meant. What they had to mean, whatever my friends said.
The New Modesty Authority had said it themselves, in that stupid brochure.What a bride should know. Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh.
To belong to your husband… what does that mean?
As I had read if for the first (and, I wished now, only) time, I had felt the heat creep into my cheeks. And I hadn’t even known why.
Except that I knew it must have something to do with the difference between men and women—between my body and Chris’s body. Wellness class in Parker’s Bluffs, my New-Modesty-subsidized town, had separated the boys and the girls,as was apparently proper and traditional. It had made sense to me; obviously boys and girls had important physiological differences, even if I had no idea what those differences really comprised. We girls learned about our bodies while the boys learned about theirs.
When other girls whispered about what the boys must be learning, I didn’t listen. I told myself that I refused to participate in those conversations because of their obvious naughtiness. My parents didn’t permit me to talk about boys in the house.
Part of me, though, deep down, knew that I didn’t want to talk about what happened in boys’ wellness class because of how it made my tummy feel—and not just my tummy, really, but my… well, my whole body. Embarrassed. I told myself it all seemed much too embarrassing to think about or talk about, especially since we all knew we’d get in trouble for discussing it.
When Chris had started to court me, six months ago, my father had sat us down and I had had to listen, blushing furiously, as Chris promised not to ‘try anything.’
I knew thattrying somethinghad to do with the differences between boys and girls, though I wasn’t really sure how. I also knew—I’m sure from information I’d picked up from my best friend Megan, now married and living across town—that kissing wastrying something, but in a way so limited that Daddy probably wouldn’t really get mad.
So when Chris had started kissing me, with a goodnight smooch after our third date, I had felt like maybe I had found a way to deal with whatever the differences between boys and girls represented. I could tell that Chris had to restrain himself in some unknown way, when he kissed me in his car for a long time.
I watched his hands, and felt them on my shoulders, and I wondered once or twice if he might actually be about to move them downward and inward a little, to touch my little breasts—one of the most obvious differences between the sexes. I wondered if he wanted to see what they felt like. I kind of wanted to see what it would feel like to have Chris do that. I kind of wanted to touch his hard, muscular chest, too—to see what it felt like.
But I knew that was naughty. I could just sense how naughty it was. And I had been brought up to understand that naughty girls get punished.
That understanding, really, was what made the New Modesty brochure,What a bride should know, so terribly confusing and frightening.
When the time comes for bed, your new husband will instruct you in how to please him. Every man has his own desires, but you must be ready to obey your husband both on your wedding night and in the future, even when he asks you to do things that you may find embarrassing, especially at first.
I remembered the enumerated list that followed. Seven points. Seven things I had to understand and accept.
First, the brochure had said,your husband will tell you to undress. That was why I had to wear the special lingerie—the white lace bra with its demi-cups that would barely cover my nipples, and the matching panties that seemed impossibly small. The garter belt. The white stockings. All of it chosen by my best friend during that mortifying shopping trip.
“You need to look pretty for him,” Megan had whispered, her eyes bright with some knowledge I didn’t possess. “When he tells you to take off your dress.”
I had wanted to ask her what she meant, but the store clerk was right there, nodding in approval at Megan’s words.
The brochure had been explicit about something else, too. Something that had made me want to throw up when I read it.You must ensure that your intimate areas are properly groomed, so as not to spoil the effect of your lingerie. Your husband will expect to see all of you, with no covering in the way; smooth and innocent, submissive to his natural masculine desire to look at his bride, fully bared for his visual enjoyment.
That was why Megan had taken me to that horrible New Modesty aesthetician. Why I had had to lie on that table while a stranger applied hot wax to my most private places. My pussy. The crack between my bottom cheeks. Places I had barely looked at myself, let alone allowed another person to touch.
“It’s normal, honey,” the aesthetician had said when I started crying. “All New Modesty brides do this.”
Second, the brochure continued,your husband will wish to inspect you. He would look at me in my embarrassing lingerie—or without it. He would examine the places that the waxing had exposed. The brochure said this was so he could ‘appreciate the special beauty that only he is allowed to see.’
I didn’t feel beautiful. I felt humiliated just thinking about it.
Third: your husband may remove your lingerie himself, or instruct you to remove it. He may also choose to leave it on while he teaches you to provide him with pleasure.
What kind of pleasure? The brochure didn’t say. But I knew it had to do with those differences between boys and girls. With the parts of me that were now waxed bare.
Fourth: your husband will tell you what posture to assume.
Posture. That meant he would position me. Move my body. Tell me to stand or sit or… or lie down, maybe? In whatever way he wanted. My face had burned so hot when I read that part that I thought I might faint.
