The Dark Space (10 page)

I watched her go to her place in the circle and thought of blackberries, jam, Kool-Aid, lip gloss. I thought of getting her naked and laying her out on white sheets, dumping overripe raspberries all over her body and rubbing them in, the juice staining her, the mashed fruit getting hot. I thought of tying her to a chair, naked, her legs spread wide open, and painting that dye all over her pubic hair, saturating every hair in violet, then fucking into all that pink and purple, and then the berries were back and we were licking raspberry juice off of each other’s necks.

She snapped a look at me — really looked at me, for the first time in two days — and burst out laughing.

Oh
God
, it was so fucking good.

“The pushing isn’t the problem, is the thing. I will push you and push you,” Maggie continued. “It’s that we’ve lost the thread of the most serious thing that we do, which is
play
.”

She turned around and picked up a box behind her. She walked around the circle, putting a jar of something from the box in front of each of us. I picked it up and unscrewed the wide-mouth lid. It was pale green, viscous. Next to me, Finn’s was pale orange. Beth’s was pale pink. Paint?

“This is a nude exercise.”

We all stopped smelling our jars. I’m surprised Maggie didn’t fall on her ass from the collective whoosh of energy that whipped in her direction.

“You’ll remember that the syllabus speaks to intimate contact and full and/or partial nudity. You’ll also remember those activities are not required for participation in the course. If you’d like to opt out today, I’ve posted some alternative work on the class site.”

Hearing her say it, hearing her say it in that moment, when the class had already done so many things that a lot of us had no clue how to pull out of — it felt bald. Raw. It felt like we had messed something up.

It felt like we’d failed, really, because I’d always thought by the time we were at
full and partial nudity
none of us would remember the line, the gate, the pass-through, the moment. Hearing her say that, the paint or whatever it was didn’t seem mysterious. It seemed like some dumb prop.

“It’s okay,” is what she said then. “All of it.”

She sent us to the dressing rooms, the first time in weeks we’d been so separated as boy/girl. On the counter, there were thin cotton robes, folded up, some with old make-up stains on the collars. We all shucked out of our clothes, quiet, our heads down.

We walked back on the stage, and I felt
naked
. My testicles crawled up inside my body, my sac cold, my dick flopping around like the piss-tube that it was.

We all looked naked. Even with the robes on. We didn’t look
nude
, which somehow implied warmth and purpose and acceptance. Beauty. We had our own arms wrapped around ourselves, our feet together, our eyes darting. It was dry and uncomfortable and naked. Ugly.

Maggie told us to open our jars.

Then she told us to dip our hands into the jars to the wrist. Both hands.

It was cool and thick and naughty. Messy and sensuous. I was making a mess. We were making a mess. This was a mess. We’ll never clean up this mess. We were a conjugation of mess, messy, messing,
messed fucking up
.

When I was dripping paint on the stage floor, on my feet, on my robe from one hand trying to dip the other, I felt it.

Joy.

It was trailing, it was a glint, but it made me smile.

Then Maggie told us the paint was glow-in-the-dark, and we laughed. We sounded like a third-grade classroom of kids halfway through
Superfudge
. There were dudes fucking giggling, and one of the girls squealed, and the stage was already a mess. She told us to hold our hands up to the stage lights, to charge the paint and focus our energy, and I tossed my head back and held up my hands, felt the paint warm and drip down my wrists, imagined it charging, particle by particle, with the joy that I could feel exponentially multiplying — like a virus. Something infectious.

She said that she would turn off the lights and start music. We were to drop our robes and move toward each other, touch skin and bodies, dance and move, experience the dark and focus on the spreading glow of the paint. When the music stopped, we were to find a robe, and the lights would go back on.

Winnie met my eyes, and watching her throat hollow with a laugh, seeing a white-green glob of paint already clumped in the electric-Concord-madness of her hair, I laughed right with her.

I’m coming for you, Winnie-girl.

She snorted.
Catch me if you can.

The lights snapped off, the darkness total except for a fairy ring of lights from our hands. The music started, and we all laughed again when House of Pain’s “Jump Around” blasted through the house speakers.

I ripped off my robe like it was burning my body. Before I could step into the void, a big hand was gripping the jutting bone of my hip like it was a handle. Then it was gone. I turned after it, and another hand smeared paint through the hair on my belly. Then there were two hands gripping my ass so deep I was almost lifted off the floor.

I reached my arms out, and there were shoulders, I think, a belly, a back. Nothing I could discern.

So I started to dance.

I started to jump around.

Everyone started jumping around. We were in a scrum of asses and boobs, arms and legs. We were rubbing, our hands touching and moving away. We laughed, we screamed, I felt bodies crouch down, I felt them leap up, I started spinning and found someone else who was spinning, too.

The more we danced and touched, the more we came into focus — darting, pixelated bodies made up of neon lights. Half a face, a set of tits, a floating arm, a curve of thigh. Our bodies melted away, and we were just — nude. Painted nudes, layers of light. We existed in the imagination of our creator. We existed for each other.

We were wet and warm, curved and bone, barbaric fucking yawps.

When the music stopped, I watched our lighted spines curve to the floor, our bright hands shuffle against it. The lights came up. The robes were hastily wrapped around us, barely wrapped around us, we hardly needed them. We were breathing hard, laughing harder, smeared with white.

Beth, clutching her robe together with one hand, her long leg all the way to her naked crotch exposed, yelled at Sarah across the circle, “I want to do it. I want to do the book. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I want to do it.”

And Sarah grinned at her, her dark curls wet with paint, and yelled back, “I want you to do it, too, baby.”

I looked at Winnie, her robe off her shoulder, her breast covered in paint, and I stopped laughing. Her eyes were right in mine, and I got warm, hot, hotter. I realized everyone was yelling
Again! Again!

The music started.

The lights went out.

I let my robe drop and walked straight ahead to the harlequin-painted neon elf in front of me.

I grabbed a handful of that candy-colored hair and yanked her head back. I slid my other hand down her breast all the way to her pussy where paint was spattered in the fuzz like glitter.

I kissed her, open-mouthed, tongue-first, my fingers working her clit through the paint, through her wetness, her hands pumping paint over my cock, between my legs, into the crack of my ass, our bodies dancing, dancing, dancing, the pleasure of it like we’d learned nothing but pleasure for a hundred years, like we had done nothing but get our hands all over each other’s asses and cocks and pussies for centuries, and while we bucked and tongued and slicked and came, bodies framed around us, touched over us, spun and circled and laughed and groped.

Again, again, again, again.

Imagine you’re in a bright space.

The world outside your circle of light is dark and unimportant.

Imagine there are four of you. Two men — we’ll call them Jason and Finn — on a couch.

A man and a woman on the floor.

The woman is you.

The man on the floor is Marvin, his hair oiled and shining. He’s wearing an orange jumpsuit that would make him look like a prison escapee if it didn’t have silver-spangled racing stripes and a giant silver butterfly collar that frames a deep V filled with brown skin and black curls.

Those curls on Marvin’s chest keep snagging your attention. Teasing it. Turning you on.

You’re not sure if you’re supposed to be turned on.

Calvin Darling isn’t in the circle of light on this particular day. He has class, maybe, or a group project at the library.

He’s elsewhere.

You are here.

Now imagine there’s a television, and it’s turned on, and all of you are facing it.

No one is watching.

Imagine that Finn and Jason began the evening side by side, but at some point Jason started to lean in, his shoulder overlapping Finn’s, and they began a slow-motion tumble spaced out over five-minute increments. It took them three episodes of
Game of Thrones
to get where they are, with Jason basically reclining between Finn’s spread thighs and Finn bumping up his hips now and then, as though he’s adjusting his position or resettling himself.

Imagine you’re pretty sure Finn is hard, and you’re pretty sure he’s grinding into Jason’s ass, and you’re pretty sure that turns you on, too.

Find your truth in these imaginary circumstances.

It’s not easy.

No one ever said it would be easy.

Imagine that Marvin turns to you and asks, “So are you still a virgin?”

You thought he meant cards, that first time. You were sure he meant you were a virgin at cards.

But imagine he didn’t.

Imagine you tell him yes, because technically you are. You and Cal have kissed and groped, masturbated in front of each other, made each other come, but that’s it.

“No oral?” he says, and you say, “I don’t know how.”

Imagine that Jason guffaws and Finn smacks his arm, and then they’re all talking too fast, nervous guy banter that sputters around what they’re really thinking.

Everyone knows how.

Sure, the basic mechanics, but technique?

No such thing as a bad blow job.

Bullshit. Giving head is a fine art.

How would you know?

Some reason I shouldn’t?

It’s all in the tongue, what you’re doing with the tip.

Naw, it’s the suction. Suck right, she can make him come hard enough to blow the back of her head off.

Dude, like she’d want that.

Why wouldn’t she want that?

But you have to swallow.

I could give a fuck if she swallows, as long as she knows what to do with her hands.

That’s true, most chicks got no clue what to do with their hands.

It’s something you learn from experience.

You can figure it out watching porn online.

You never see the hands clear enough in porn.

There’s some movies where you do. I’ll send her links.

You should show her.

Fucking what did you say?

I said you should show her.

Imagine there’s a long silence.

Imagine your ears ring, and your cunt burns, and then Finn kind of laughs and says, “Dude.”

And Marvin says, “He wants to.”

And Jason says, “Fuck, why not?”

Locate your impulse in this scenario. Find your meaning.

Dig into the dark space and perform what your heart wants.

Do it.

Turn around. Crawl closer to the couch, where Finn’s perched on the lip of it, staring at the top of Jason’s head, and Jason is peeling the denim off Finn’s hips with both hands, so eager he’s lost all self-consciousness.

Watch the pretense fall from him. Fall away.

Watch it roll off both of them and right out of the light, like a set piece on invisible wheels.

Scoot up until you can feel the velour nap against your bare arm, until you can smell the warmth of Finn’s crotch, until you can feel Marvin’s breath behind you and see the muscles in his orange thighs, his knees planted to either side of yours.

Study Finn’s penis, longer and skinnier than Cal’s. Darker, the head purple-brown and swollen where Cal’s is so pink, so wet.

Watch the way Jason grips it, the way he strokes down the foreskin that Finn’s cockhead has already pushed aside.

File that away, because you’ve wondered how that worked. What to do with foreskin if you ever encounter it.

Watch Jason’s tongue lick a stripe of saliva up from base to tip.

Watch him flick it over the head and listen to the hiss of Finn’s inhale as Marvin bumps against your lower back, a deliberate slow circling of his hips, his hands landing on your upper thighs to hold you still against him.

Jason’s lips purse into an angelic O when he covers the head of Finn’s cock.

His cheeks hollow when he starts to suck.

His head bobs, and his hand works, and his fingers find Finn’s balls and play with them, weigh them, tug at them gently while Finn rucks up his shirt and slides his hand over his stomach, claws his chest, scratches up his neck with his fingers protruding through the ring of the collar of his T-shirt like the hand of an alien whose urgent needs are outside his control.

Listen to Finn’s broken, panting breath when Marvin puts one palm on your stomach, slides it under your shirt, beneath your waistband, his fingers sinking right into the deep syrupy pulse between your legs as though they belong there.

This is Finn’s smile, wide and darkly radiant. Stoned on ecstasy.

This is the light spinning over his shoulders, Marvin’s disco-ball collar scratching your neck, Finn’s lips saying, “Baby, sweetheart, god, baby, yes,” while he’s pumping and groaning and coming in Jason’s mouth.

These are your breasts, your boobs, your tits,
yours
, with Marvin’s dark fingers plucking at your nipple, baring you to Finn’s sleepy eyes, his happy mouth, to Jason’s slow turn and his tongue licking over his lip and the placid perfection of his expression.

This is your orgasm, your red-gold-perfect sloppy heat that spreads from Marvin’s hand through your belly, over your breasts, spilling out over the room, making them sigh, making Marvin rub himself in fast hard jerks against your ass until he bites your neck and you feel his grip on you tighten, his hand grabbing at your pussy so hard it hurts, it hurts just right.