Tampa (22 page)

The lights in my cell suddenly came on at this epiphany. This supernatural effect was multiplied by the fact that it was the
middle
of the night—for a moment I thought some divine force had just agreed with me and my cell door was about to crack open, allowing me to tiptoe out and escape. The doorknob did in fact turn seconds later, but there was nothing magical about it: no orgy of foundlings in tiny white briefs grappling for sexual consolation filed in; no masterful escape plot unfolded. Instead, Ford opened the door.

I was still sitting upright in bed with my knees bent open
, both hands clutched between my legs.

Ford was drunk, but not as drunk as might’ve been advisable. This was completely Ford’s style: coming finally to make contact at this hour, in this place, to display his wide range of privilege. In fact this was the very first thing he addressed.

“I have some buddies who work the night shift,” he explained. I thought about removing my hands from my genitals but realized somewhat amusedly that their position might give the impression I’d recently been sexually assaulted in the shower room, and it didn’t seem wise to dismiss whatever combination of jealousy and sympathy that might produce in him.

I said nothing; what he wanted most was for me to speak.

He produced a long exhale that was noticeably sharpened by gin. I wished to avoid any scenario where he might start crying; he wasn’t entirely comfortable with tears, so he felt they required long justifications. Now that he was actually in front of me again, all the previous curiosities I’d entertained—that he and I might reunite in the harmonious arrangement of my needing money and Ford’s needing a stunning wife, or the romantic notion that his breakdown might fill me with a sense of victory—disappeared entirely; he was as annoying as ever and I simply wanted him gone. He appeared to
be more tan than I remembered, which brought out his wrinkles; he’d doubtlessly been staying home from work to drink
conciliatory
liquor by the pool. Each one of his square teeth, made highly visible as he squinted in an attempt to withhold emotion, seemed like a separate deficit. They were unmistakably the teeth of a man, and the muscles warping his thin V-neck T-shirt attested to a brute strength that felt obscenely zoomorphic, more animal than human. I realized that Ford, alone with me in the cell, could do whatever he wanted—beat me up, rape me; it might even be possible, if the paid mouths of his friends were shut tightly enough and a plausible story was created, for him to kill me and get away with it.

I actually would’ve welcomed any nonfatal form of battery. I wouldn’t be able to report that Ford had done it—his family, after all, was footing the bill for my attorney—so the implication in the courtroom would be that I’d been beat up by guards or fellow
prisoners
. This leverage could bring compassion in the eyes of the jury and media, and might possibly allow me to argue for a transfer into a nicer holding area, something less severe than a jail cell.

“Why?” Ford finally shouted. His fists were flexed, ready to pick a fight with the mere idea of what I’d done. Now that we were at the point of artifice finally being over, I saw no need for dishonesty.

“It’s just what I like.” At this point his eyes moved down to my clasped hands. He seemed to be anxiously waiting for me to remove them, like my vagina was a mouth ready to confess to all sorts of atrocities and I was merely gripping it shut in order to silence its cries.

The muscles in his forehead began to move in opposing
directions
; for several seconds I watched its various folds come alive like rows of earthworms, each one moving independently from the
others
. “You’re some kind of pedophile?” he asked. 

“I’m not pilfering the elementary schools,” I pointed out. “They’re teenagers.”

“But you married me,” Ford spat. In his grief it was hard to tell if he was simply worked up or if he’d prepared himself for our meeting with a more proper dose of alcohol than I’d originally thought. “It wasn’t like we didn’t have sex,” he countered. As if the thought was too absurd to even speak, he chuckled a little, though it was dry and unsmiling; he knew that once he said it, he’d likely have to accept it as true. But the part of Ford that hoped I’d immediately proclaim the statement to be lunacy and chime forth cries of denial did finally compel him to say the words: “What we had together wasn’t fake.”

I suppose I could’ve given him what he wanted, apologized and said that it wasn’t him, claimed to be sick in the head. But the boxy gold rings on his fingers were too much a reminder of the nights I’d had to sacrifice a part of myself to placate him. Now that there was no further reward for pretending, it simply felt too difficult.

“You should go home, Ford,” I said, as gently as I could bear it. I felt a surge of injustice at the irony of it all: Ford was completely inattentive to the unlimited sexual potential he could leave my cell and start enjoying. How simple it would be for him to walk into a bar and find a partner of legal age whom he was attracted to, take her home and proceed to orgasm. Yet he had no sense of
appreciation
for this liberty. Instead he’d go home and drink and sulk.
Perhaps
make an ill-advised intoxicated drive to a late-night gun range. While I’d have given anything I still owned for just an eyedropper of Boyd’s semen to play with, there was nothing stopping Ford from running off to taste the full spectrum of the
Kama Sutra
rainbow, but he didn’t even care.

“Do you love me?” he asked. When this question failed to gain 
an answer, he soon began looking for a consolation prize. “Does any part of you love me? Did you ever?” I didn’t mind anger, but his expression was turning to one of injury and it sickened my stomach. His pain seemed like such an internal, private thing, no different from excrement—something to be dealt with in private. But here he was, putting it before me and making me smell it.

I realized his eyes had grown wet with disbelief; he was truly
seeing
me for the first time but couldn’t reconcile it with his memories. He seemed to need some verification that I actually was the same
person
he’d lived with for several years—that his authentic wife wasn’t trapped somewhere, kidnapped, while I acted as her imposter. So I lay down on my cot, finally rolling away from him toward the wall as was my usual custom when we’d get in bed at the same time. With an air of normalcy, as though we were at home for one last evening together, I uttered the words I’d said so often in our bedroom. “I’m tired, Ford. Could you please turn out the light?” As I closed my eyes, the question brought on a nostalgia for my soft pillow, for my
nightstand
of applied creams set to begin working as I slept, repairing any damage done through daily exposure to free radicals.

I held myself taut awaiting his reaction; my buttocks
involuntarily
clenched, partially expecting him to attack. Instead he stood there for what seemed like hours, staring at my back as I kept my eyes fixed on the wall. “Fuck,” he finally exclaimed. He then began a loud bang on the metal door that echoed indefinitely and had the effect of making it seem like we were inside a submarine. Moments later the door buzzed open and everything grew quiet.

It was the last time I ever saw Ford. The light inside my cell stayed on all night.

Whenever the prosecution rattled off a list of the physical
acts that comprised “lewd and lascivious battery,” the judge’s face held a look of delighted interest suggesting he wasn’t the least bit bored by the details of my trial. In general, his constant expression was one of content inquiry, his eyebrows raised expectantly like a tourist sent to the future who was trying but failing to
comprehend
what he might see next.

He certainly wasn’t prepared for the spectacle of Janet Feinlog.

She was my defense’s sole character witness; in addition to hardly knowing me, all the other teachers at the school, in fear for their jobs, would never have agreed to come say anything nice about me on record. Perhaps Janet wouldn’t have either, had she still been employed at Jefferson. Shortly before the Christmas following my arrest, Janet had had an expletive-laced meltdown in front of her class and thrown her chair against the wall. Nearly half the students captured video of the incident on their cell phones: by the end of the day, the recording was well on its way to going viral on every social media website imaginable.

The entire court seemed to come to a standstill as she
waddled
to the podium in a black sweat suit that appeared to have dried toothpaste around the collar. Once she got seated inside the witness-box, she grabbed the complimentary glass of water and
began chugging as though she’d just finished a marathon. But after her thirst was quenched, she was more than ready to go.

She didn’t wait for a question from my attorney, instead
choosing
to take an “open mic” approach that lost her some points with the judge. “Celeste is a good woman,” she barked, pulling the
microphone
closer to her mouth. “Teenage boys’ minds are in the gutter.” After several warnings to only answer the questions asked, she
apologized
in a conciliatory manner that warmed my heart: it was clear she wanted to be an effective witness on my behalf.

“Mrs. Feinlog,” Dennis began, “have you ever known a teenage boy to make a sexual advance on a teacher?”

“Does a bear shit in the woods?” Janet scoffed. “I taught junior high for nearly twenty-five years. Their brain is a gerbil and their libido is Sasquatch. You really think the gerbil is going to win?”

On cross, the prosecution chose to focus more on Janet’s recent
career
change. “You were fired from Jefferson last fall, isn’t that correct, Mrs. Feinlog? For low job performance and inappropriate classroom behavior?”

Janet chose to perjure herself just a little. “It was mutual,” Janet remarked. “I didn’t want to work there anymore.” Then she rubbed her nose with the back of her palm several times and squinted at the prosecutor as though his head was rapidly shrinking and she could hardly make out his face anymore.

During the prosecution’s presentation, Jack and Boyd had been asked nothing beyond simple questions that established if the events had taken place—they didn’t need to prove why or assign blame; if it had happened I’d broken the law and was guilty. Jack had kept his head low, refusing to look anywhere near me, while
Boyd openly grinned and repeatedly tried to catch my eye. Rather than cross-examine them then, Dennis decided to call them back as witnesses for our defense—he hoped this might give the jury more of an impression that the boys were still on my side. This was certainly true with Boyd; he was a smiling, gift-wrapped witness who wore his pride at having slept with me on his sleeve. From the moment we’d begun having sex, Boyd’s greatest wish was for the world to somehow know all that he and I had done together, and now that it did, he couldn’t have been more ecstatic. When Boyd came back up to testify, his newfound confidence made his steps nearly buoyant; I half expected him to pause on the way up to the witness-box and do a backflip.

The prosecution objected to the relevance of nearly every
question
my attorney asked—the details, in their mind, didn’t matter as long as the crime had occurred. Most were sustained, but
occasionally
some slipped through. It was still a payoff to ask them and have the seeds of doubt planted in the minds of the jury: Was he sorry that it had happened? His smile said it all. Had he enjoyed our time together? Before an objection could even be made, he’d already begun nodding enthusiastically. “You began the sexual advances toward Mrs. Price, didn’t you, Boyd?” my attorney asked. This was a risk but a calculated one: I knew how much he’d want the credit and the attention; given the chance to claim initiation, he’d certainly accept. It was overruled but the jury knew he would’ve answered yes had he been allowed.

Bringing Jack to the stand was a much greater gamble. But since we’d brought Boyd back up, if we didn’t call Jack it would seem like we were scared of what he might say. Which, in fact, we were.
Though there was nothing my attorney would ask him that would be a platform for his going off on a tangent, if he grew upset enough, he might yell something out of turn in anger or frustration that would look very bad to the jury. Dennis was confident he could spin any outbursts; in short, if Jack grew upset, Dennis would imply the anger stemmed from my cheating on him with Boyd. Still, when Jack took the stand a second time, I’d never been more nervous in my life. I knew that one deeply credible explosion on his behalf could easily send me to prison for years.

Looking at him was no small chore. Far more than Boyd, he’d aged greatly during the year that had passed since my arrest. I supposed his stint in juvie certainly hadn’t helped. His voice had dropped and was coarse with grief; even though he was still shy of sixteen, trauma had expedited the development of adulthood’s
physical
design upon his body. Although I’d always known he’d quickly age beyond attraction, I suppose a part of me had hoped that
somewhere
—in Jack’s eyes, perhaps, or in a fleeting expression—I could see that our relationship had been forever preserved, a sign that
laying
my body upon Jack’s had been like stopping the moving hand of a clock on at least one part of him. But the eager and credulous boy of eighth grade whom I still thought of with desire didn’t seem to be buried inside him at all. The fluorescent lights of the courtroom magnified his newly pronounced stubble; the ill-fitting suit he wore, likely one of Buck’s that his father had optimistically held on to in case he ever lost his spare tire, didn’t help either. Each moment of his testimony, I had to look away and think of the future and the hope of other boys in other places. His adult features felt like an insult of erasure, a failed experiment on my behalf that would never cease to finish failing. 

“Jack,” my attorney began in an authoritative tone, “we all know the things you did with Mrs. Price.” Jack shifted in his seat and looked down at his lap, his lower lip wavering. “I just need you to tell us a few things honestly. Did she force you to kiss her?”

Jack exhaled too close to the microphone, causing the sound of a loud gust of wind to echo forth. “No.” I knew Jack well enough to guess what was spinning in his thoughts. Admitting that I hadn’t forced him was surely making Jack contemplate his own guilt in the entire situation—at not pushing me aside and calling 911 the night his father died, at losing all his old friends and his former home and way of life, at being sent to juvie after attacking Boyd. Jack started to cry.

My attorney approached the stand and laid a fatherly hand upon its wooden railing. His voice softened as though he and Jack were speaking completely in private, the only two people who would ever hear the words. “And did she force you to make love?”

“Objection,” said the prosecutor. “‘Making love’ is not an
acceptable
euphemism for statutory rape.”

“I’ll rephrase,” my attorney offered. “You had sex with Mrs. Price. Was it consensual? Did you want to do it?”

“Yes,” Jack answered. “I wanted it.” His voice was breaking; it sounded like a confession to something much greater.

“Thank you, Jack. I’m sorry you had to come here and do this.” My attorney returned to the table and sat. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

Despite being told he could step down, Jack stayed for a
moment
, crying, then looked over at me. It wasn’t at all the look of
hatred
I’d expected. Instead it was a look of mutual knowledge, Jack conveying to me his new understanding that the world could be a
terrible place. His eyes said that no one at all was looking out for him or able to fix this essential flaw in life’s fabric; my eyes stared back and told him that he was right.

But the jurors and my attorney, and even the prosecution,
apparently
, saw something far different within the span of that gaze. “Dynamite!” Dennis proclaimed after court was adjourned for the day. “That look he gave you after testifying? It was like he wanted to crawl off the stand and into your lap! Plus the tears. The tears could not have been better. Hell,
I
felt ashamed for making him feel guilty about his own impulses. What that jury saw was a
red-blooded
American teenage boy asked to repent for nailing a hot blonde. I think our chances are good.”

We still had psychological experts ready to testify that I had a mood disorder and low impulse control, but Jack had proven himself to be a gift that kept on giving. Worried that jurors might
sympathize
with the boys for being attracted to me, and sympathize with me for having given in, the next morning the DA offered me a plea deal of four years’ probation that I accepted. I couldn’t go within one thousand yards of a school, couldn’t be unsupervised with anyone under the age of eighteen, and had to attend group meetings for convicted female sexual offenders. But I was free.

On the day of my release, my attorney wrapped me in a
congratulatory
hug that suggested we’d proven triumphant in a noble moral struggle. “We did it,” he announced proudly, then he gave me an exaggerated pat on the back; his eye flinched with what may have been a passing thought of discomfort, but only once. “Now keep your hands to yourself out there, hear me?” 

A year after
my release, I got permission to move away to a sleepy beach town and was reassigned to a probation officer who wears flip-flops. She commonly uses the phrase “your best estimate is fine” during our Q & A at my monthly check-ins. It’s low-key.

Currently, I work at a cabana bar for a seventy-year-old man named Dave who is overly fond of Viagra jokes. “I’ve had five heart attacks,” he’ll say, opening the flap of his Hawaiian shirt to reveal an impressive collection of sternum scars amidst his reddish-tan, papery skin, “and I probably wouldn’t survive a sixth. But dying might be worth getting it up for you.” I just roll my eyes and call him a
pervert
. His antics are easy to put up with because he pays cash under the table; so far, I’ve never had to tell anyone here, save my probation officer, my real name. I rent a grotesque trailer on the swampy edge of town so I don’t have neighbors I have to divulge my sex-offender status to; the nearest resident to me is a Citgo gas station three miles down the road. This town is nothing more than a place to regroup, and it’s temporary; for now the most important aspects of my
self-care
—restarting the oxygen-infusion and LED-light facials,
adhering
to a micronutrient diet for optimal skin elasticity—eat up nearly all of my earnings. Someday soon when my patience has rebounded, I’ll find another wealthy man to date, but after the ordeal of the trial, it’s nice, just for the present, to not have to do anything that repulses me other than live in squalor.

Most of my time is spent on the beach by the resort hotels or at an open waterfront bar where I sit in wait for disgruntled teenagers fed up at being in a hotel room with their family—sometimes they come out at dusk for a solitary walk. I look for the telltale pallor that implies they’re on vacation; I’m not willing to take any risks on
local boys. Instead I give them a name like Mindy or Jenna and tell them I’m on vacation too, state that I’m in college and ask questions that assume they are as well. A few lie and pretend they actually are but most laugh and confess they’re only fourteen, then feel
flattered
when my interest doesn’t wane. We find the pool-supply sheds of their hotels or one-person fast-food restrooms, dark corners of the beach where two bodies on a towel won’t draw attention. When they insist on a phone number I give them a fake; if they’re adamant about meeting up the next day, I tell them to meet me at a snow cone hut on the opposite end of the beach and never appear.

For now, my youth and looks make this easy. I try not to think about the cold years ahead, when time will slowly poach my youth and my body will begin its untoward changes. I’ll have to pare down to certain types: the motherless boys, or those so sexually ravenous they don’t mind my used condition. Eventually I’ll have to find a better-paying job in an urban area with runaways hungry for cash whom I can buy for an evening. But that won’t be for many more years; there’s lots of fun to be had between then and now.

I’m certainly mindful not to press my luck too far. On slow weeks, I’m training myself to be more content with memories. I have a near-photographic recall of my good times with Jack and Boyd and still think of them often, exactly the way they were when they entered my classroom. Sometimes the thought that they’re now nearly eighteen wraps around my images of their younger selves like a snake, and my stomach reels as I imagine them fully grown. If a vacationing Boyd were to stumble into my bar one night, I would have a visceral reaction of nausea—it would be no less horrifying than seeing a three-hundred-year-old corpse reanimated. The two of them are still my favored fantasy, if only by aggregation—after
all, I had them each so many times—but occasionally the
subconscious
knowledge that they are basically adult men now is so
bothersome
as to make masturbation difficult. Some nights, in order to orgasm, I have to reimagine history and tell myself that neither of them made it past the eve of my arrest alive: that Jack suffered a fatal wound at my hands in the woods, and Boyd, bleeding alone from the skull in Jack’s bedroom, succumbed to shock and died.