Ladies' Man (25 page)

After ten minutes or so of totally meaningless conversation I brought my arm in a sunrise-to-sunset arch behind her back, caressing the side of her neck. She turned her head to me, eyes down, bypassed my mouth and kissed me under my ear. I leaned back, my hands in her hair. She pressed her palms against my stomach. I tensed my gut muscles. She slid her hand back up to my throat. I slightly disentangled myself enough to move, and holding her by the arms I raised her to a standing position. She seemed unsteady, as if unsure about what I was doing. We walked temple to temple almost in slow motion to my bedroom. Her arm had somehow wound up across my shoulder and it felt unnatural there.

Sliding to the bed we started tongueing and grinding which didn't feel like much because we had all our clothes on. After a few minutes we parted in slow motion and undressed ourselves, sitting back to back cater-cornered on the bed. I purposely didn't look at her undressing, as if that was a sign of my maturity. She didn't look at me. When we were nude we lay back on the bed, on our sides. She slid her thigh between my legs. The first full flesh contact was a rush and I crushed her ribs with a grinding hug. She was flat-chested but long-legged. I slid my hand down her spine, through her buttocks and into her cunt. It was only damp. My fingers touched the hard rubber rim of a diaphragm. La Donna used a diaphragm.

"Do you need to put in jelly?" I asked casually mainly to show her I was hip and experienced with diaphragms.

"Yeah, I guess."

"Nah, I was thinking maybe we should put some in now rather than at the last minute, you know?" I tried to make that suggestion sound soft and romantic.

"I guess." She went into the living room and returned with a nylon floral cosmetic bag dangling from a loop around her thumb.

She sat on the bed and took out a tube of cream and a clear plastic syringe.

"You want me to do that for you?" I softly offered. I didn't know why we were being so polite. It was like our well-mannered gentleness was a margarine substitute for intimacy.

"No. It's okay." She raised the syringe slightly above eye level, screwed the mouth of the tube into the mouth of the syringe and squeezed, forcing the plunger all the way out and filling the glass with cream. She reminded
me of Madame Curie.

"Here at the Will Rogers Institute, our scientists work tirelessly," I announced into my fist. She gave a short, preoccupied chuckle, then leaned back until her spine was only inches off the bed, and shot up the cream. She sat up and put all the stuff back into Her cosmetic bag and dropped the bag on the floor. I reached for her, my eyes averted, and we slowly re-clinched. I slid down her body dryly kissing everything in my path, nipples, beauty marks, ribs, navel and finally pubic hair. She twisted her legs so I couldn't go any farther.

"I just put in the cream." She winced.

"I don't mind." I gently parted her thighs and got to work. She lay back, eyes closed, a look of discomfort on her face, flinching now and then, finally reaching down for me and making motions to pull me up. I felt unappreciated. I crawled back up her body wiping my mouth on her belly. She rolled me off and went for my prick. She sucked too hard; every once in a while her teeth pinched me. The idea of what she was doing was more exciting than the actual physical sensation and I knew I wouldn't come if she blew me for an hour. I slightly raised my knees; she took the cue and crawled up my body. We kissed, rolled over. I slipped myself inside her, then immediately pulled out. No. This had all the markings of a bum fuck and no. Not tonight. Not after this week. I couldn't take it. She frowned.

"Whoa, listen." I sat up, smiling. "We gotta relax, you think?" I held out my hand as if to touch her, but left it hovering over her thigh. She propped herself on her elbows, her stomach tensing.

"You think?" I smiled harder, but not greasy.

She nodded in tentative agreement. "What do you have in mind?"

"Listen, let's start all over again."

"What do you mean?" .

"Let's get dressed and start over again." I shrugged. "Just trust me, okay?" I wasn't sure exactly what I had in mind, but
I
trusted me. I got dressed. She didn't move. "No, it'll be good, it'll be good." I handed her her dress. She slipped it over her head, moved to the edge of the bed and put on her shoes.

"Come here." I sat on the floor cross-legged at the foot of the bed and patted a spot in front of me. Then I got up, went into the living room, threw on the Coltrane again and came back in with a lit joint.

"Just sip it. I don't want no acid trip here. We're just gonna... " I nodded and dipped my head. "Nice, like that." I passed her the jay and closed my eyes.

After a few tokes, I reached across to her and held her hand. Okay, Mr. Kenny. Get horny. Get sexy. Think thighs, think lady. Think clothes. Black and slinky and dropping like petals. Think pink. I kneaded her palm with my thumb. I slid my fingers under her dress, letting them rest on the softest part of her thigh. She rubbed my arm with both hands as if to draw me to her crotch. I helped her to her feet, turned her around to face the bed and hugged her from behind, kissing her neck, drawing my fingers down her throat, squeezing her with my arms. Reaching behind her, she tugged my pants down my hips. I unzipped the back of her dress and pushed it down to her stomach by running my hands in a V from her shoulders to her belly. She kept working on my dick, her fingers moving from my balls to the head. I plunged my hands into her bush, pushing her dress past her hips until it dropped to her ankles.

She was as stoned as I was. Her two front teeth glistened between her slightly parted lips. She stood on tiptoe and I slipped inside, my arms draped across her hips like a G-string. My lips formed the words "I love you," then they shaped "Wa wa" as if to erase "I love you."

And then we went at it. She held on to my neck, her pelvis pushing against my arms as I kept grinding inside her, running my fingers through her bush, rubbing her clit, slamming her buttocks with my hips until we both fell belly down on the bed. I flashed on the words "class clown." We disentangled to sprawl across the center of the bed. She lay on her back, I slipped myself inside, this time from the front. She sucked in air, ran the soles of her feet up and down the backs of my thighs, and I knew I couldn't last. I was going to pop my wad. She clawed my ass and moaned in my ear and I was a goner. I gave it all I had.

"Oh go!" she shouted, and I exploded, then kept going, kept going more with my hips than with my traumatized prick until she pressed her cunt bone right into me, clamped my ass as hard as she could, slowed me down to short, intense movements, rocking crotches until she started trembling like the vibrations of a train approaching a station. She let out with a roaring gasp. The mattress was shaking like magic fingers. When I ,' finally rolled off, we were both pockmarked with puddles of sweat in the valleys of our bodies and there was a huge wet spot the exact shape of the continent of Africa on the dark brown sheets.

I reached over to hold her face in my hands and kissed her on the mouth. I felt terrified. Not me. I felt not me. Despite the sweat, I grabbed her, hugged her, my fingers yammering through her hair. I was scaring her. She laughed and tried to get playful, tickling my ribs. I didn't respond. Didn't even crack a smile. Just pressed her to me, my hands on her shoulder blades, my cheek on her jaw, our body heat rising like steam. Not me.

"Fin gonna pee in bed." Pushing me away, she jumped up for the bathroom.

I jerked, remembering the sensation of the fragile glass exploding in my hand. I flashed on sitting in the high school auditorium with a bunch of guys watching some dumb shit movie,
The Yearling, Old Yeller
. It was assembly day. We wore white shirts. I cracked jokes nonstop for the first twenty minutes of the movie. A fat kid in the row in front of me turned around and said, "Do we gotta listen to you all movie?" Snickers. I was so mortified I said, "Yes," and, gray-faced, continued rifling for another fifteen minutes until I could slide into silence gracefully. The snickers were from my friends. I felt betrayed. Lied to. I hated everybody; I felt so alone I wanted to run away, die, make them worry.

I remembered being made to stay after class one day in fifth grade for acting like an asshole in an attempt to entertain my classmates. Everybody filed out at three o'clock, me sitting alone, arms folded across my desk watching them leave, still winking and rolling my eyes at those who were looking back at me on their way out. But the reality was that I felt horrible, an animal in a cage. I expected the teacher to yell at me; instead, she sat next to me in a student's small chair, put her hand on my cheek and said, "Kenny, what are you afraid of?" All I could focus on in that moment was how I never saw a big person sit on one of those small chairs and how my face chilled when she touched me and how I was going to kick fucking Peter Moriarity's ass for woofing on my mother at lunch.

Kristin returned from the bathroom, lay down next to me and started playing with my stomach hair. My impulse was to slap her hand away. It was the most irritating sensation I had ever felt. I wanted her to keep her fucking hands to herself. I needed to sleep. I wanted to grab her face and slowly explain through clenched teeth how fucking badly I needed to sleep. I wanted her out. She would never let me sleep. I had to sleep. She was going to get heavy with me, demand things of me. Off my back. I had to sleep. I would never sleep. Get off my back. I lay in bed rigid. A six-foot stick of dynamite.

She moved away from me, confused. Leave, leave, leave.

"I wonder what time it is?" she murmured.

I raised my head to see over her to the digital. "One-thirty."

She exhaled through her nose.

"I think I better get going."

"Sure."

"If I stay out, my sister'll freak."

"Okay."

"You're not mad?"

When we left the house, I felt hollow looking at our half-drained drinks on the floor by the couch.

We had to come back upstairs because she'd forgotten her cosmetic bag.

She lived six blocks down from me on West End Avenue.

"Listen, I'll call you during the week, okay?"

"Sure." She kissed me.

It was 2:05 in the morning, but I didn't feel tired. My crotch was damp and gummed up with come and diaphragm cream. I was still horny. On impulse I flagged down a cab on West End and went back to Mr. Natural's.

The place was still hopping. I moved cockily through the crowds rapping to this broad and that one but not anybody who was really available. At three o'clock the place had thinned enough so that I could check out everybody there. Only two girls left were possibilities. One was talking to seven guys at once, the other to three guys. I was beginning to feel desperate. I gravitated toward the nearest girl and increased her audience to four. She smiled briefly at me and kept talking. Suddenly bright lights blinked on and off. Everybody flinched. The shag-haired bartender in white shirt and thin tie leaned over the bar and droned: "Last call, last call, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."