Crush (40 page)

There’s no answer to that. And I’ve known it for years. But I keep asking, don’t I? I need to stop asking.
I need to let it go.
I want, I need, to wrest myself free…
Let it go
…
A hot wave is rolling up my body, crashing onto the shore, into my voice. “Please,” I begin to cry softly. “Please, Tammy… please? Please? Please?”
He sucks me hard, and the sound his mouth makes when it parts from me nearlyends me. “Please what?” he growls so silkily in his throat that I almost orgasm again. I lay beneath him, my chest heaving. I can’t answer. I want his mouth back on me. I want it back…I can’t believe how close I am to him while I’m inside of his mouth, how warm, how safe, how utterly
loved
. I can’t explain this oneness…Where do I end? Where does he begin?
I’m afraid of this total loss of control, this possession he’s taken of me. I’m afraid of what’s breaking inside of me because when it’s out, I’m going to shatter into a million sparkling pieces and be scattered all over the universe.
I don’t want to surrender…I don’t want to let it out…but how can I hold it in?!
You’re not dirty…you’re delicious
. The sordid images seared into my brain my whole life long burn away brightly in the unbearable heat. “Please? Please? Please…” I beg as Tammy devours me like a lion savoring the pulsing blood of an antelope.
Mybodyclamors for release, twists itself into knots, screams for an end to this horrendous, beautiful torment.
He takes his mouth off of me again, just long enough to say, “I want you to cream right into my mouth, Baby…come on…come on, Baby…I know you’re ready…come right into my mouth…” His voice strokes me inside, fanning the alreadymonstrous fire…then his mouth returns…
It breaks…I can’t stop my body’s response to his beguiling voice…I thrust, sobbing, my back arching painfully, my soul separating with a soft ripping sound…
…and floating, like an angel, above myflesh…
The chains snap from around myankles…
Let it go…let it go…just let it go…
Abrilliant light strobes before me, and I scream, hoarse and shrill, in agony and pleasure as my body empties itself into Tammy’s willing mouth.
This is different…usually when I come it’s hard and quick, overwith too soon…or slow and rich and wet, my entire pelvic region clamping, releasing, clamping, like our first time or the day he gave me myangel.
Right now…I can’t describe it, except it’s not so much physical…it’s all
feelings
…it’s like everything is leaving me...and I don’t know if I am comfortable with everything I’ve ever known leaving me. All my fear, all my anger, all my hatred. It’s seeping swiftlyout of me. It’s like pain, but it feels so good.
I slowly come back to myself, and, like the vulture that waits for a last dying gasp, it’s there again as my body softens and my heart bridles itself from a gallop. It’s there, hideous, hateful, persistent, the voice of Satan, the Accuser, the Liar. That’s who it is. That’s who it’s always been:
You’re dirty…you’re nasty…you’re just like your Daddy…
They were Satan’s disciples. They were doing Satan’s work when theyraped me. When theybeat me. When theytortured me.
You’re a pervert…you’re dirty…you’re just like him.

I turn and tell myself,
He’s a liar! He’s the father of liars, remember?
Tammythinks I’m strong…and he’s right…I’m strong…
But I’m not as strong as I’d like to be. I never
have
been as strong as I’d like to be. The visuals crowd in on me, corner me, queued up, raising their clubs, attacking, and all I can do is cower, cry, cover myeyes…
But then, Tammy is here. “Come on,” he says, and he takes me and holds me and lets me cry. I cryfor a long time, because it hurts.
It hurts to let it go.
But I have to. I
have
to let it go. Forever.
And I have to let Tammy love me.
He holds me close, talks to me. I feel the strong, solid thud of his heart against mycheek, and I know I trust him.Abruptly, I’m all over him again, like flies on shit, kissing him everywhere. He bends and folds my body like origami. My heels dig into his ass, pull him to me, and we laugh as he mounts me and fucks me like there’s no tomorrow.

After hours of dozing, eating cold leftover pizza, and fucking our brains out, he finds me sitting out on the balcony at four o’clock the next morning. He asks me if I’m alright and I nod,
Yes
. “Can I come out there with you?” he asks.
Of course
, I nod.

Cooling tears are still dangling from mychin as he whispers, “Pennyfor your thoughts?”
I shrug. “I’ll go get your pad,” Tammysays. Then he halts just as he’s about to open the sliding glass door into our room. “You’re not going to
do
anything, are you?”
I can’t believe he can still think that…
“I’ll get your pad,” he says again, and dashes inside, returning only a few seconds later, stumbling clumsily, nearly stubbing all ten of his toes on the heavy iron patio chairs, obviously terrified I’d thrown myself to the ground below. When I shake myhead sardonicallyat him, the dam
he’s
constructed over the past several weeks begins to crumble. “I’m sorry, Jamie…I almost lost you…twice!” He sits and pulls me into his lap, and we hold each other. Instead of writing, I force the words through my mouth: “I…love…you…Tammy.”
Unable to speak another word, I scribble,
I’m crying because I’m so happy! I don’t want to die!
Tammycries on. “Myworst fear is losing you,” he sobs.
You didn’t lose me
, I write.
I’m here
.
“I’m never lonelywhen you’re close to me…I couldn’t take it if I lost you…”
I’m the one who was attacked and left for dead, but Tammy was nearly killed too. I know that. As physically big and strong as he is compared to me, sometimes he seems the more fragile of the two of us.
“I’m here,” I whisper, nuzzling mynose to his.
“Yes,” he whispers back. “You’re here…”
I lost another kind of virginity tonight
, I write.
“Me too,” he sniffles. “Thank you, Jamie…thank you for letting me in…”
You knowI love you. And I trust you
, I add.
“You do, don’t you?”
Yes.
I lay my head on his shoulder and gaze over it as he gazes over mine. We each stare out into the sparkling skyline of Vancouver stretching up into the inky, starry firmament. We hear the whispers of early morning traffic. I feel a gentle, cold wind lifting and ruffling my damp hair. The gold band on my finger flashes in the dark.

…but I’m with Jamie. The trial, which is coming up in June, is in the wayof us really
living
. We return home after our wedding, try to settle into domestic life. I go back to work at the U.C. Davis station with myshow, myhours now from sixto ten PMso I can be home at night with my husband…but I feel a restlessness. I want to do something
more
with my life. The job’s been fun…but it seems I’m about more than just fun nowadays. I want to concentrate more on writing about animal cruelty, and focus a lot more energy than ever on the fight against it. I’ve read a lot of articles in the PETA magazines about the mistreatment of everything from snakes to ducks and geese, and I feel like I’m sitting and doing nothing about it.

Eventually, Jamie returns to Saint Paul’s Hospital. His peers and superiors accept that sometimes he cannot speak (
I feel like my throat is stuck
…
it’s so weak
, he’s tried to explain to me.) and has to relyon a notepad or gestures to communicate with the staff and patients. But he, too, has felt a big sea change.
I want to work with AIDS patients
, he tells me.
I’m going to go into hospice nursing. I want to do something real…really help people. I don’t feel like I really help people when all they did was break their leg skiing.
He mentions a cat sanctuaryon the coast again.

Deep in the wee hours one night, I begin to cry while feverishlytyping out an article about an animal “hoarder” who was recentlybusted in Michigan. She had upwards of two-hundred cats and dogs living in squalor in her barn, attic and basement. They were crammed into cages, sometimes two animals in one cage with barely enough room to turn around. The cages were encrusted with filth and waste, and there were corpses in manyof them. Several cats and dogs were covered in skin infections. Some were half starved. Some were so far gone they had to be humanelyput down.

Crying’s not an unusual thing for me. I cryall the time when I hear bad things on the radio, or see them on the news. It’s not just animals I care about. I cry over the poor little kids from Somalia who are being driven from their homeland by drought and alQuaeda terrorists. I cry over the atrocities committed by the drug cartels. I cry over a lot of things that I never used to think twice about.

Myheart is tenderized…
I still won’t watch crush videos, but the other day, I was on a website, a good and sincere website trying to bring awareness to the world about this evil, and I saw a couple of still captures from a crush video…just still captures, not moving video, but they were horrible…a man torturing and murdering a puppy, oh God…
Whyare these kinds of people allowed to live among the rest of us? Why are they allowed to live
anywhere
?! They should be taken far away from any living creature, put on an uninhabited desert island (get all of the animals safely away first!) and left to their own devices!
I usually weep quietly and then wipe my tears and press on, but tonight, it’s just so overwhelming, all of it. It’s like the weight of everything that’s happened to us, the weight of evil in this world, is finally caving in on me, for real. I break down, sobbing all over Jamie, and he scribbles,
You’ve been so strong for me, but you have to take some time off. You’ve been doing so much
, he insists. I’m sitting up at night on the computer, researching, still writing articles for the Glendale shelter and Purrfect Peace, and now contributing mytime to an animal rights group in Vacaville.
I’m overtired, Jamie says. I cry so easily and feel everything so intenselyanymore.
“Excuse me for caring,” I snap at him quietly.
I know you care
, he gently writes.
But you’re going to make yourself sick and burnt out and useless if you don’t take a break.
“I know that,” I mutter irritably.
All you can do is pray, Tammy
, Jamie writes.
You can’t be there for every single cruelty case…the world is too big and too evil. All you can do is pray about it.
I sit and tearfullyglower at myscreen, trying to ignore him.
Let’s go to Fort Bragg.
“Now?!” I exclaim.
Yeah, why not? We can be there by dawn. We can dig our toes in the sand, watch the sun come up.
I shrug carelessly, but the thought of the ocean is beginning to lift myass out of that chair already.
You need pampering
, he writes.
In two days, you’ll be refreshed and ready to take this on again.
God, I love him. It’s like a second honeymoon. We sit on the beach, take deep breaths, let the cold, salt sprayhit our faces, bury our toes in the sand, close our eyes, open our hands, and just let our bodies relax. After a while, we abandon our meditations and play in the surf. I pick him up and carry him out to where the breakers are curling into white foam and I toss him in. He leaps up at me and silentlyscreams, “
It’s cold
!” He tries to grab me and pick me up, but I’m too heavy, so he grabs mylegs and shoves at me until I lose mybalance and tumble in.
When we return to our motel, we take a warm shower and watch the sand swirl down the drain. Jamie obviously means to pamper me. He gentlyand firmlymassages myfeet, myback and my neck and shoulders, and his warm hands melt the tension away. He holds me close to him, softly kissing my face, whispering to me, making me relax…my eyes drift closed, and I dream sweet dreams. The motel room has blackout curtains, and we spend most of the dayjust sleeping with the TVplaying on low volume.
We wake up in the middle of the night and make love. I beg him to top me. I want to feel him inside of me. I want to feel what he feels. I want him to feel what I feel. He shakes his head.
“Please, Baby…”
He writes,
I can use my fingers
. And I accept.
He’s veryshy, because he has to look, reallylook at mybody in order to use his fingers.
I remember…watching Uncle Price molesting Natalie, an infant…I remember violating my dog Cotton
…how wrong it was…I still feel so ashamed, so shitty…about all of it. Jamie says he’d rather die than ever become a child molester. I feel the same way. How could I have
done
that?
Children do weird things
, Jamie said once.
I could never do it again. I will never, ever hurt or molest a child. Nor will I ever hurt or molest another animal. And I know it.
People
do
change. Children do grow and learn right from wrong. I have a conscience.
Jamie’s movements are gentle, tentative…Is he thinking this is wrong? Is he worried that he’s molesting me? Is he still having those fears about becoming ‘Daddy’?
And I do everything I can…to remind him that we are
not
our fathers…we are
not
our uncles…we are Tam Mattheis and James Pearce…we are two adult men…we are a loving, married, committed, consenting couple.
I do everything in my power to let Jamie know that I love him…that I trust him. I whisper and writhe my encouragement as his fingers speak to me.
This is intimacy.
We grow closer with everynew experience.
I want him inside of me.
But he’s not readyright now, he says.
It’s okay…
It’s going to take a while. It took him so long to let me do what I did on our wedding night. And I can wait for him…as long as it takes…I know one day, he’ll make this latest wish of mine come true.

We talk and talk…and a new life, even beyond the completion of being married, calls to us. For weeks, we both sort of push the little voices into the backs of our minds.