Tampa (14 page)

“We shouldn’t be too long,” I warned. “That’ll have to hold you till you’re back at your dad’s.”

Jack’s expression instantly hardened, as though he’d been
insulted
. “You’re not seeing him while I’m gone, are you?” There was a hint of outrage in his voice.

“Of course not. I told him I have far too many family gatherings to attend.” I gave Jack a frisky poke in the ribs and he laughed with relief.

“It sucks,” he said, shaking his head. “My dad is crazy about you. Usually he’s kinda ‘whatever’ about women. I knew he thought you were really good-looking but I didn’t know he’d get all gaga.” He zipped up his pants and paused, hesitating to add, “He talks about you all the time.”

I gently grabbed the collar of Jack’s shirt, tilting my head to the side and letting my hair fall across my right shoulder in a way I knew to be flattering. “Jack,” I said reassuringly, “he doesn’t even know me. He has no idea who I really am.”

This thought made Jack smile—subtly at first, but soon he broke out into a wide grin. “Yeah.” Jack nodded. “He sure doesn’t.” We gave one another a final kiss, nearly choking on the force of our own needy tongues, before I opened the door. We’d reasoned that if
someone else was waiting, I’d try to ask the location of a store as a distraction while Jack crept out. But the woman planted outside was squat and hunched over a walker.

“Here,” I said to her loudly, directing Jack out behind my back, “let me help you.” I stood in front of her, a concerned citizen, and slowly guided her toward the door while his thin teenage frame dashed out and off.

Christmas Day with
Ford had the effect of his seeming to be in cahoots with Jack—every gift he gave me was some type of boudoir garment I couldn’t wait to wear for Jack, from satiny thongs to lace bustiers to crotchless teddies. “Ford!” I was able to exclaim upon opening each package, my voice truly resplendent with expectant glee over the way Jack’s mouth would drop. “This is downright nasty.” The ice cubes in his glass of whiskey clinked as he brought the cup to his face to water his leering grin.

I knew an initial viewing session of the garments was
unavoidable
, so I took a great number of sedatives and washed them down with cranberry mimosas; Ford had placed himself in charge of deep-frying a turkey, so I had no real duties for the day other than to remember to continuously dab a Kleenex at the drool forming in the corners of my mouth and serve as a veritable blow-up doll for Ford to take his festive cheer out on. We both passed out after
dinner
, Ford from tryptophan and myself from a more complex
hurricane
of chemicals, and by the time he woke me up making jokes about the Cool Whip originally intended for the pumpkin pie, I was in a twilight state of cyclical consciousness. I managed to put on the French maid–inspired bra-and-panty set (Ford had included a small
pink feather duster in the box that he wanted me to use to tickle his cock) and began spouting loose phrases in French I remembered from college (
Peux-tu m’aider?
). There’s little else I remember about this particular celebration of Christ’s birth. The next morning I woke up sore with the raging thirst that follows a night of
obliteration
, but with very few painful memories. That erasure was the gift I gave myself.

It was a situation we couldn’t have foreseen. The Sunday
afternoon prior to the start of spring semester, Jack called to say Buck had taken his car in for an oil change. What we didn’t know was that the wait at the mechanic’s was going to be hours. Since the shop was just blocks from Jack’s house, Buck decided to walk home until the car was ready. Instead of the loud and slow mechanical crawl that usually warned us of Buck’s arrival and added a
generous
thirty seconds from the time Buck pulled into his driveway to his entering the house, there was only a tiny click of a key, nearly imperceptible, and the soft closing of a well-sealed front door. Buck was already walking through the living room by the time we heard him whistling. We were on top of the kitchen table, Jack positioned behind me in a deep thrust; there were open containers of holiday leftovers that we’d been using as body paint strewn everywhere—cranberry sauce, brown gravy, pumpkin pie—and our eyes opened wide in mutual terror as Jack jumped down and yanked on his shirt and a pair of gym shorts; his boxers were crumpled up on the floor over by the stove. I was able to put on my bra and secure one of its three clasps, get my shirt over my head, and pull up my pants. When Buck’s figure rounded the doorway, he saw the disheveled appearance of Jack’s clothing, my pants hanging open unbuttoned and unzipped, and the carnage of our edible foreplay atop the table.
As his gaze met mine, I felt my hands, which were holding the top of my unzipped jeans, begin to lightly shake.

No one said anything. I could see Buck’s mind working—he knew what he’d just seen, but he didn’t want to have seen it. He wanted a loophole, a flimsy cover story he could bury his doubts under so there didn’t have to be an emergency.

Standing, I slapped my bare stomach. “You’ll excuse my
appearance
, I hope,” I said. “I had to unzip these puppies and let my gut breathe. I need to take it easy on the leftovers.”

There was a brief moment when he didn’t react at all, seemingly deciding whether or not to follow my lead. His left eye began to tic, as though the scene before him was simply a slideshow experiencing technical difficulties—he was trying to move forward to another image, but we were stuck on this one. I watched his field of vision move from Jack’s neck and collarbone, lightly stained with traces of foodstuffs, over to the table, then finally rest back upon my
unzipped
pants. These were puzzle pieces Buck badly wanted to
rearrange
so that they formed a different picture.

“You certainly don’t have a gut,” he finally said. But he wasn’t smiling; he wasn’t fully on board yet.

What else could I have done? I walked over and placed my arms around his neck, my greatest show of affection to date, cringing as the side of my cheek landed on the wiry pad of chest hair that often spilled from the top of Buck’s shirts. He seemed to take great care to always have this curly fur exposed during the daytime, as though it needed photosynthesis to thrive. “I’m glad you’re home,” I said to him, trying to whisper but knowing that Jack would hear no matter how quietly I talked. Jack would have to understand, though, and hopefully also feel a sense of gratitude—I was about to martyr my
loins on the grotesque altar of Buck’s four-post bed, all so our
escapades
might continue. “Jack and I were just having a snack while we waited for you. I don’t have long but I thought maybe if you’re free for a bit we could spend some time together … I could finally give you your Christmas present?”

I have to hand it to Buck; he wasn’t one to sit idly atop a power dynamic and let it expire. His hands moved up to rest on my waist and the previous confusion in his face gave way to a carnivorous excitement. “You certainly can.” He smiled. I looked down and saw his penis had begun to swell against his pants with an embarrassing immediacy, as if he’d just pulled a cord to initiate inflation. “I was beginning to wonder when I’d see you again.”

With that, he took me by the hand and led me to his bedroom, where a prompt interchange of compromise began. My pants were already unzipped; when he reached slowly down into them and felt the absence of underwear, his mind seemed to register every
permission
slip he could possibly think of as being signed and sealed; seconds later he’d pulled them down completely and was kneeling in front of me, running his tongue along the connecting divide
between
my leg and pubis. I closed my eyes and tensed up; the feeling of his tongue didn’t even register as a human body part—I felt like my thigh was being stroked with the belly of a moist toad. Foreplay with Buck wouldn’t do; I had to convince him to move things along. “Buck,” I managed to say, “I’m more of a get-right-to-it girl.” He looked up, slightly confused, so I took the initiative and lay down on the floor facing away from him, curling my arms and knees in toward my chest in a fetal pose that would still allow for entry. It was the same position I’d assumed on my bathroom floor the last time I’d gotten food poisoning to help ease the cramping.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, his stumpy hands running up and down over the circumference of my ass.

“I want you inside me,” I said, but the inflection came out wrong—it sounded like I was trying to convince myself. So I
managed
a follow-up line so awful that I was only able to say it through clenched teeth: “Please don’t make me wait any longer.” I found myself wishing I’d employed a bit more strategy before we’d
gotten
undressed. I could’ve asked Buck for a minute alone to use the restroom, then guzzled down his mouthwash and aftershave in the hopes of getting a buzz off their low alcohol content.

“Your wish is my command,” he whispered. I felt a gagging tug at the back of my throat but managed to swallow it down with a quiet burp. He quickly fumbled off his shirt and pants, each sound a tortuous reminder that we hadn’t even started yet. There was a small slapping sound of hand on skin, the equivalent of Buck having to prime gasoline into a lawn mower engine by pulling the cord a few times, then finally, with relief and a bit of pride, he kneeled down behind me on the carpet and said, “Okay. I’m hard for you.”

I might’ve laughed had I not felt two of his fingers, unable to resist a small checkup, do an exploratory rub across my vagina. “Let me wetten things a little,” he said. I felt his face and breathing move closer toward my exposed flesh; it was all I could do to force myself not to rear up and kick him in the jaw.

“No, don’t!” I yelled; my voice had all the urgency of
someone
calling up to a suicide jumper from the street below. “Sorry,” I said, recovering, “I’m weird about that.” The thought of his tongue on my genitals seemed like a contamination I’d never be able to shake off. I could already feel each place he’d managed to lick me
earlier—the path of his tongue left a skein of saliva that dried a bit too tightly on my skin.

“Do you want some lube?” he asked. “I think I’ve got some around here, somewhere.”

“Buck,” I said, turning my face to his with the best portrayal of excitement I could manage. I caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror hanging on the wall—I was smiling far too widely, with an unnatural number of teeth exposed, as though I was doing an impression of an overly enthusiastic game show host. But I wanted to make my impatience to finish seem like an impatience to begin. “Shut up and stick it in.”

With that he nodded and placed a hand on my back, using his other hand to make joystick corrections to the left and the right as he tried to align himself and eventually succeeded.

“Is that okay?” he asked. I began pushing back toward him with an animal energy, half trying to push him off me and half trying to make him come. I reminded myself of what was at stake—by the time we finished, he needed to be absolutely convinced that it was him I wanted; I hadn’t come to the house to hang out with Jack. I began performing a satirized impression of a cliché pornography soundtrack—every hyperbolized moan one would produce in order to make fun of contrived ecstasy. “You’re frisky,” he exclaimed, and moments later, “This is incredible.” He then divulged an obvious confession: “I’ve been thinking about doing this since the second I saw you.”

It was only then, as his thrusts became more pronounced and jerky and his hands began to slide farther and farther down my torso in an attempt to gain leverage—he wanted to somehow try to move even deeper inside of me—that my craving for escape caused
my head to loll sideways and notice the door was wide open. Why hadn’t Buck closed it? Did he
want
Jack to hear us? If so, I
wondered
about Buck’s motivation. Either he wanted his son to know about his sexual conquest out of some depraved sense of paternal pride, or it was related to what Buck had walked in on earlier—that moment an unconscious part of his brain was likely still working to convince itself it hadn’t actually seen.

Near the end Buck started audibly grunting, a throaty,
primal
groan that sounded like a marine completing an obstacle course. He seemed to be losing steam; his thrusts were more
erratic
and further apart, as though he had to recharge between each one. I had to close my eyes when I saw it then in the doorway, unmistakable—the top half of one of Jack’s white athletic socks, his toes peeking closer toward the door’s entrance than he realized.

“Jack,” I whispered inaudibly, the terror of possibility causing my hands to clench knuckle-white into the ground. I
immediately
began the future conversation he and I would have to have in my head, preparing a list of rationalizations: I really didn’t have a choice, Jack. Your father saw us together, and I was pulling up my pants. If I hadn’t done what I did, I would be in jail right now.

His toes stayed fixed in the doorway until the very end, when Buck let out a protracted wail that sounded like a large draft animal readying to sneeze. The noise startled me; my head snapped upright and my eyes landed on the shelf above Buck’s bed that held a series of bowling league trophies. When I looked back, Jack was gone.

I was hoping that the two of us would get to sneak a simple good-bye, no matter how small—a wave and me mouthing
I’m sorry
, or perhaps I’d even resort to the juvenile phrase he was so adamantly fond of—
I love you
. But his door was shut when we
emerged from the bedroom and I worried about forcing contact
before
I left. If I made an excuse to go into Jack’s room, there’d be the risk that Jack was inside crying hysterically. And he certainly might, in his grief, begin a loud confrontation. Instead I let Buck give me a farewell kiss on the neck—“You’re a goddess,” he gushed; I simply turned and opened the door to leave. The sound of the garage door lifting as I started my car felt traitorous. Where had that noise been an hour ago when we needed it?

“Hey,” Buck called. “Can I get a ride up the street to the
mechanic
?”

I rolled my window down a crack and peered out at him. “I’m sorry; I can’t. If my husband saw us, he’d put a bullet between your eyes.” With that, I rolled the window back up and peeled out of the drive.

In the middle
of the night I woke to the soft buzz of Jack’s cell phone going off inside my purse beside the bed. Ford was snoring and didn’t hear it. For a moment I looked at him as I held the
glowing
device in my hands—his slack jaw was open with a troutish indifference; his left arm was buried beneath his head to reveal the gaping maw of his armpit and its garden of long hairs that rose out from his body like visible fumes. I shut the phone’s vibration alert completely off, then sat for nearly an hour watching Jack’s repeated calls light it up again and again and again, its green glow
sounding
a panicked alarm that only I could hear. Ford seemed securely unconscious; I was half tempted to go out to the pool patio and
actually
pick up, to whisper my devotion to Jack in hushed tones and calm him down. Thinking about the very hormones that coursed
through Jack’s veins and made his reaction so drastic was itself a turn on—he was out of control in all the right ways, a mind steered by his body. It was almost enough to tempt me to sneak from the house and go to his window in earnest, but getting caught by Buck a second time in one night might be more than sexual bribery—no matter how enthusiastically delivered—could make him overlook.

I barely registered the first two class periods the next day; I had the students all do freewriting about their holiday break. Most of them worked for ten minutes, then began to rampantly text
message
. I certainly didn’t care. The first class was half-asleep, used to the up-all-night schedules they’d established the past three weeks playing the video games they’d gotten for Christmas and having sleepovers with friends. The second class was a bit more alert.

“When are we going to talk about
Lord of the Flies
?” one girl asked.

“Talk away,” I said. Out of nowhere I suddenly remembered the feel of Buck’s sausagelike fingers upon my shoulder. An acidic stripe of vomit moved up my throat in a way that made me picture mercury rising inside a thermometer.

“None of that stuff would’ve happened on an island of girls. Spearing a pig in the … butthole?” She made a visceral “no thank you” face, as though the act were a party game we were actually playing and she was refusing her turn.

“Yeah right,” said Lambert. He was a dorky kid who wrote long diatribes in his journals about how girls
say
they want a nice guy but he knew this to be patently false:
I am one such fellow,
he wrote,
and my female peers will not come near me unless they’re trying to copy my homework
. “If it were an island of girls they would’ve cannibalized each other in days.”

I sighed, an autopilot recording of base-level literary analysis rattling through my mouth. “It’s an interesting book to help us think about our own barbaric tendencies, given the right
circumstances
.” I paused, hoping the conversation might turn to sex and lift me out of my depression. “What are some times when you feel out of control?”