Elizabeth Gomez: The Devil in Miss Jones and Me

Since I was a young girl, I’ve always been attracted to women. When I got a little older, I realized I was attracted to men, too. Eventually, I came to understand that I wanted to bang anyone who simply looked in my direction, smiled, and offered me an ice cream cone from a white windowless van.

It was difficult for me when I burgeoned into my adult body because I didn’t fit into any sexual category except for “pervert.” Which was ok with me, but I didn’t have any advocacy groups that would go on Donahue on my behalf… and I really wanted to be on Donahue. I would have fantasies of being on his show and listening to his audience members screaming about how immoral and disgusting I was. All the while, Phil and I would exchange knowing glances to each other. After the show, we would be left alone on the stage and I’d say in a soft breathy voice, “Oh, these lights are so hot”, then begin to unbutton my shirt. His glasses would fog up and I’d take them slowly from his face, lick the lenses clean, and lift the hem of my skirt to dry them, leaving him thirsty for my young ample thighs. P.S. Thank you, Humbert Humbert, for changing the way I viewed older men.

When I call myself a pervert, I am not talking about being polyamorous or being into vanilla things like spankings. I’m talking about the shameful and guilty satisfaction you get from carnal desires hidden in the shadows of your mind. It’s like being Catholic, but with less “Amens” and more “Oh My Gods”.

When someone would whisper in my ear, I liked that my nipples got hard. I enjoyed leaning my love button on the rounded corner of Mr. Miller’s desk when he was talking to me and staring directly into his crotch excited at the possibility of seeing an erection. Often, I’d leave the curtains of my bedroom open in hopes that there was a peeping tom masturbating at my window. I now know these guys are usually serial killers, so I’ve dropped that fetish but still objectify people in the most shameful of ways.

The desire to have sex is a natural feeling, at least that’s what all the boys said to me when they asked for handjobs. I knew what they were saying was true based on the extensive research I had done through Dallas, Dynasty, and Melrose Place. Sooner or later, I would discover tingly emotions for someone. If I understood it correctly, it would start with endless bouts of swooning, leading to a spontaneous make out session in the midst of a heated argument, then cut away to heavy heaving in a bed dripping with sweat. This would finally end in tragedy, when I find out that my lover is my half brother from my dead father’s former marriage.

While I had sorted out a few things about bodies and how they worked, I wasn’t very clear on the mechanics of sex. Most of my friends were boys so they talked a lot about their dicks, but they didn’t really know much more than I did. We didn’t have the access to pornography like we do today, but we did have access to Jeff’s dad’s collection of Hustler magazine. Magazines like Hustler only taught me that if I wanted to be successful at having sex, I probably needed to invest in more lip gloss, a teasing comb, and get comfortable spreading the lips of my vagina with laced gloved fingers.

As an extremely bored latch key kid, I spent a ton of time going through my parents’ stuff. My boy besties had been telling me how their fathers had porno films hidden in their rooms. According to the boys, there was live action where you could watch people having sex and look at giant furry muffs. Being a fan of vintage clothing, I wasn’t sure why you had to keep your hands warm during sex, but I wanted to find out. I scoured my parents room and only found a $20 bill in the pocket of my mother’s waitress apron and a crocheted green tank top she was working on for my father.

Defeated, I went to pull a movie to watch for a nice afternoon on the couch. Back then, we had VHS tapes and there were usually 3 films to the tape. My father was organized and would label each film on the spine of the case. I found my selection and popped it right into the VCR. For some reason, as the cartoon started, the tape got all fuzzy and horizontal lines began to fade into a picture. The words “The Devil in Miss Jones” appeared in a 70’s curvy font.

Please don’t confuse this movie with the Devil AND Miss Jones, a 1941 comedy starring Jean Arthur and Charles Coburn, where a cantankerous tycoon goes undercover as a salesperson in his own store to eventually fall in love with his coworker and become a better person.

The Devil IN Miss Jones, on the other hand, is a pornographic film about a woman named Justine Jones who commits suicide in a bathtub by slitting her wrists. She is forced into limbo because she was too good for hell, but her voluntary demise will not allow her in heaven. Justine is given the choice to stay in limbo forever or go back to earth to become a deviant in order to enter hell. She picks hell.

I watched as Miss Jones started her journey back on earth as a complete and total slut. She does it with men, she does it with women, she has a scene with a snake, and she sticks grapes into her love cave. In the end, when she finally goes to hell, she is forced to spend eternity as a raging sex addict rooming with a man who has no interest in it, but does have a strange need to continuously catch bugs. Yes, this is the real premise to a movie that is designed to arouse all your naughty bits. While, I was surprised at what “hell” looked like, I was excited to travel the road straight down.

Needless to say that the Devil in Miss Jones was not quite the Walt Disney presentation of Bedknobs and Broomsticks that I had expected. But, it was one of the best things I had ever seen. I felt free from my perversions because I knew that no matter how many times I imagined Gopher from The Love Boat rubbing me down with strawberry jelly, it would never be as bad as sticking a banana in my anus. Miss Jones had freed me of my fear that I was the trashiest girl in America. Though, she did leave me wondering what vegetables were in my fridge.

No matter, how hard I tried, I could never tell the boys about the movie I saw. I could only look at the magazines of pretty white girls with perfect pink tulip pussies and wonder why mine looked like a dying sea slug. The boys would tease me about my budding breasts, I would tease them about cumming in their pants. It was a time of myths and one eyed monsters, of innocence and naïveté.

The day finally did come when I found the right boy to whom I lost my virginity. I was nervous and frightened, but felt that I had been preparing for a long time for this special moment. I knew I loved my boyfriend and that his mother never met my father. I knew he would be gentle and kind. With a deep breath, I released my fear, held onto my The Devil in Miss Jones confidence, and grabbed my bowl of grapes and proudly moved onward.