Punishment with Kisses (2 page)

Sex with Terra was fast and brash and all consuming, the kind that popular culture tells us women don’t like to have. She could wield a strap-on like it was an extension of her body, and I guess in Terra’s case, with the frequency with which she wielded it, it probably was.

Terra was one of only three lovers I had while away at college. Terra, Andrea, and Mark. Andrea wore heavy kohl eyeliner and black turtlenecks year round. She regularly drank bathtub gin, forgot her bipolar meds daily, and frequently told me,
in flagrante,
that when it came to lovemaking, I would never please another woman. Since I could never please
her
during our brief, clumsy encounters, I began to suspect she was right. Why
were
women so hard to please?

That question, of course, led me to Mark, the hairy pre-med student who wasn’t hard to please at all. After a few minutes of kissing, when he’d shove his tongue down my throat until I choked, I’d pop off my bra—because his thick fingers seemed too clumsy to handle the small clasps—and well, Mark would pop off too. I think he made it inside me only once during our frequent attempts. The rest of the time he left the field before I even got to the game. It was nice being wanted—and more than that, being so exciting to a partner that he couldn’t even wait for the main act—after Terra’s unavailability and Andrea’s unkind endorsements—but even when Mark was there for me, there was no thrill in the moment.

His facial hair hurt everything it touched, particularly my nether regions where it seemed to attach to—and rip away from—my personal undergrowth as though it were Velcro. His knowledge of female anatomy was alarming, especially for someone planning to become a doctor. The last time he went down on me, giving my nappy dugout sloppy circular kisses that missed the mark every single repetition—
God, why couldn’t he find my clitoris?
—he gave up, breathless and exhausted before I’d begun to feel even a twinge of desire. I gyrated my hips left and right and yanked him into position by his hair, but
nothing
seemed to work.

Which led me back to Terra’s embrace and her sloppy strap-on seconds. It was enough to drive me to the brink of ecstasy each time, even though she shoved me out of bed the minute we finished so I’d escape before her girlfriend returned. I think it was a thrill for Terra, the fear of getting caught, but it would’ve been nice, just once, to lie there for a moment after we finished, basking in the rush of blood to my head, the sweat pooling between us, gazing at her flushed face and sticky smile.

Alas, with graduation upon us, Terra went east and I went west, and the next time I heard from her was alongside a wedding announcement, heralding the Massachusetts nuptials of her and the girlfriend. Why is it that the biggest cheaters are the quickest to jump on the wedding bandwagon? Is there excitement in the challenge of commitment? Is it even more thrilling to cheat after you’ve said
I do?

My journey to love took a lot longer than Terra’s. My long, circuitous drive home to Lake Oswego offered a psychic buffer, the spiritual cleansing I needed before submitting to an entire summer in close proximity with a family I considered toxic. Against all evidence to the contrary, I still hoped that maybe
this
would be the summer my sister Ash and I rekindled the relationship we’d had years ago, when we were both pre-teens. Back when our mother was still alive. Back before Father took a child bride and Ash was a college dropout, before all our paths diverged in such nuanced ways.

Little did I know then the twists and turns my personal, psychological journey would take—around dangerous curves, over treacherous roads, down dark alleys and dead-end streets—or that by the time I reached my destination, my relationship with myself, my sexuality, and my family would be forever altered.

*

“I don’t fucking care what you think!” Ash yelled, her top completely naked, the bottom of her bikini riding up around her ass. She flaunted her body just to hurt me, to remind me that compared to her ample bosoms and perfectly proportioned bottom, I had the body of an ogre.

Ashley always was the beautiful one, a woman every man wanted. Every woman wanted her too, I was sure, though they were probably more cautious about admitting it. Ash—as I’d called her since we were kids—seemed to sense early on what power her allure would hold over others. As soon as she hit puberty, Ash was wielding her sexuality like a modern-day Lolita. I envied her confidence. I was always zit faced and fatter than the other kids, developing love handles before I got boobs, and even then there was a pudgy roundness about me that still looked unformed well into my college years. But Ash sprang from sixth grade a full-fledged woman, a sexual Pied Piper with a legion of fans who would gladly do her bidding merely for a chance to be near her.

Ash seemed to have no shame when it came to displaying her body. She had no qualms about being nearly nude, save for a tiny black bikini thong, even when standing in the kitchen, with the cook and our maid Maria and the gardener whose name I didn’t know then. Worse, Ash seemed equally comfortable exposed in front of me and our father and his wife Tabitha—who I then thought of as the stepmonster—who was no longer a child bride but, at twenty-eight, was still just two years older than Ash. Father was absolutely enraged by each and every spectacle involving his exhibitionist nymph of a daughter.

Indeed, at this moment, our father, Bradford Caulfield, a man usually so rigid and silent we hardly noticed his appearance, had beads of perspiration rolling down the sides of his contorted face, one thin blue vein bulging below his collar, hidden mostly by the formal shirtsleeves he was wearing. His fists were balled up at his sides.

“If you continue down this path of moral bankruptcy, Ashley Spencer Caulfield, you
will
regret it.”

The threat could be taken as nothing but that. Except pigheaded Ash couldn’t have cared less. As Father raged on, threatening her rather malevolently, Ash started fighting back, almost berating him like an ex-lover, while Tabitha, usually so flighty and flirty, stared on doe-eyed and aghast.

It was just another day in Casa de Caulfield. But maybe this time Ash had crossed the line.

“Listen, Daddy-O, my sexuality is my own damn business. It’s not yours to control.” Ash said each word in a constrained manner. Too much weed, probably, slowing down her reflexes.

“This is my house and I won’t have you swimming naked in front of the help and whoring around with an endless parade of misfits and freaks. For fuck’s sake, Ashley, what are you thinking? This will be all over town and then you’ll never get in the Junior League.”

Ash doubled over laughing. It was maniacal the way she responded to Father’s reprimand. The coercion that would make me back down always emboldened Ash. Today was no different.

“Oh yes, must not upset the frigid bitches of the society pages—” Ash began. She clearly didn’t care about the Junior League, and I was surprised that Father hadn’t already surmised it.

He cut her off. “That’s it. You’re out of the house. If you’re going to behave like a pig, you can move into the pool house. Let’s see how you like living in eight hundred square feet with no one to serve you.” Father made the pronouncement as though sentencing Ash to the confines of a small shed, not a vacation cabana with its own Olympic-size swimming pool. That’s the way things worked when you were the golden child. If these were criminal proceedings, Ashley Caulfield would have just been sent to a ritzy, resort-like white-collar minimum security prison. If the shoe was on the other foot, and it was me in that position, I’m certain the ruling would be completely different. I’d be sent straight to Sing Sing.

Ash stared at him for a minute, as though pausing to catch up with what he was saying, or simply planning out her summer of fun. Then she turned and left, casting one last snide comment over her shoulder. “Oh, Father, don’t be silly.
I
won’t have any problem finding someone to service me.”

*

The next day half a dozen people arrived and began moving Ash’s belongings into the pool house. I was still pissed off at Ash for ruining my homecoming and for putting a kibosh on any chance of the two of us bonding before I headed to grad school or out into the real world—I wasn’t exactly sure yet which course I was going to take. Ash’s acts of selfish defiance also effectively eliminated any chance I could have the summer I’d dreamt of, lounging by the pool myself.

With her banishment to the cabana Father established a no-fly zone, a walled East Berlin in the center of our property. To cross the border between our house and the pool would now be seen by Father as an act of treason, an announcement of my alliance with his sworn enemy. The retaliation would be swift and severe. And with the pool house already occupied by his favorite child, God knows what would happen to me. I imagined being kicked to the curb, sent away in a cab, never allowed to return.

It was too dangerous to risk, even for a summer of deep tanning and refreshing dips in the cool blue-green water. But I was still pissed. This was my last summer at home and now I was stuck spending it all indoors, trapped inside with a pissed-off father and Tabitha, the stepmonster, who I’d never managed to get close to, even though we’re not that far apart in age.

Within hours of Ash’s dramatic departure from the main house, there was a wild party raging by the pool. From the balcony of my second-floor room, I could not help but see all the beautiful people wandering in and out of the pool house, some drinking, others just sunning themselves. I didn’t need to find Ash in the crowd to know there would be people bunched around her, toadying all over her.

I stepped back into my room and shut the sliding doors. Ash could have her little tantrums. I was going to ignore her and her escalating war with Father by thrusting myself into all the novels I’d brought home with me. Dorothy Allison, Jewel Gomez, and Michelle Tea. These authors were like good friends I could call on for all-night gab sessions. Their words gave me the kind of excitement I wasn’t finding at home and reminded me why I loved to be immersed in fiction instead of real life. A good novel is like a current that sweeps you up and carries you away from the real world to a magical land where you get to let yourself go and delve into the lives of people far more interesting than you.

With Michelle Tea’s
Valencia
in hand, I stretched out across my four-poster bed, nestled in the down comforter that should be too hot for this time of year, but somehow felt cool beneath me, and let the story pull me into a fantasy world. For the first two days home I was so engrossed that I barely moved—occasionally rolling from my back to my stomach to prevent bedsores, and rising only for bathroom breaks or to go downstairs for the requisite meals.

Loud voices and laughter wafting up from the pool house interrupted my reverie. I tried to ignore the noise, but I couldn’t shake my curiosity. Who was out there and what were they doing? It wouldn’t hurt to stretch my legs.

Not wanting to damage the book’s spine, I carefully slid a piece of paper in to hold my place and set it on my bedside table. My legs were spongy with sleep, and when I put my weight down they caved under me. I grabbed on to one of the smooth, hand-carved posts and managed to stay upright. I used the furniture as crutches while I stumbled across the room, going from bed to desk and outside to the railing of the balcony.

Fortunately, my land legs returned, because the minute I stepped outside I was blinded by the light and instinctively raised a hand to shield my pupils from the excruciating brilliance of the midday sun. When my eyes finally adjusted to the brightness, I was not surprised to see Ash wearing nothing but bikini bottoms, floating on a giant inflatable bed in the middle of our pool. She wasn’t alone. A man wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and a woman with an old-fashioned one-piece suit were taking turns stroking Ash in the guise of applying sunscreen. Their movements rocked the raft and splashed water onto Ash, who shrieked theatrically. I looked around to see who was playing audience to her show. Our gardener, whose name I still couldn’t pronounce, was skulking behind the hedges, pretending to trim them while peering over at Ash and her strange friends floating in the aquamarine water. She was probably trying to give the old guy a heart attack.

I was appalled at her complete lack of decorum, and angry with myself for falling for Ash’s exhibitionism. She was probably out there laughing louder and louder, calculating what decibel would bring Father or me to a window. Ash was like a child having a tantrum, stamping her foot and yelling, “Look at me, look at me,” to get attention.

To hell with her.
Valencia
was waiting, full of the kind of clever prose I loved to read in literature classes but had never yet managed to write myself. Tea’s words saturated my mind like rain falling through slats on a barn roof. Sometimes I read lines aloud, letting the words linger on my tongue, rolling them around my mouth, tasting them with the different sensors—sweet, sour, salty. I adored her words, and I turned them over and over in my head as the day began to slip into evening, oblivious to the party still going on.

A scream interrupted me. I spit out Tea’s words and tossed her book aside before racing out to the balcony again. Ash was out of the water but standing by the pool, now with a different duo: the woman from earlier today and a new man. I wanted to stare, to see what the hell they were up to that elicited the shriek I’d just heard. But I was afraid Ash would catch me at it, and I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing she’d gotten my attention
again.
And knowing her, Ash would just call me a pervert and tell Father I was spying on her, just to get me in trouble.