The Girl who Couldn't Come (5 page)

I sound like I’m writing greeting cards.

Tonight is one of those nights where you find yourself alone in your bedroom reading pornography. To be more accurate, it is one of those nights where I find myself alone in my bedroom reading pornography. Only, instead of arousal, it has conjured up a mixture of arousal and nostalgia. That is a dangerous combination. 

Tonight is one of those nights where you think about calling old lovers to see how they are. Perhaps they want to meet up, right now, for coffee. Or perhaps they’d like to watch some television. Should you call? Will they be able to hear in your voice what you really want? 

Tonight was worse than that, Edith. Tonight I went one step further and actually called. I picked up the telephone and dialled. I called Fiona, at one in the morning, making every effort to sound casual, to give the impression that one o’clock phone calls were nothing out of the ordinary for me.

“Oh, hello Fiona. How have things been?”

What is the matter with me? Fiona and I were together for less than a month. We met in a record store, shared a laugh over two young men who stood at the front of the store. They were very confident in their tight pants, talking knowledgeably at one another about influential but obscure bands. Fiona wore tight pants, too, though we never once spoke knowledgeably about anything obscure or influential. We hardly spoke at all.

Even our lovemaking was quiet. She would come over and we would watch television, sitting close together on the couch. We would move, slowly, closer and closer together, until our legs touched, until her hand rested on my knee, until her head rested on my shoulder. Then her hand would begin to move, first trailing her fingers gently, then squeezing my leg. I would run my fingers through her hair, then down onto her face. We never talked about this. When we talked on the phone, she said, “Want to watch TV tonight?” or, “Want to play video games again?” 

We would make innocent plans, and one thing would lead to another. But then it stopped. She came over to play video games and we did not move closer and closer together. We sat and made small talk and laughed, the same as before. I tried moving closer on my own and when I was close enough to put my hand on her knee, she stood up for a glass of water. 

I should not have called her tonight.

“Are you seeing anybody these days, Fiona? Oh? A boyfriend? Ha ha, well, if you ever find yourself missing the gentle touch of a woman. Oh, you know exactly what I’m talking about. What? No. No, I was only kidding. I’m sure you’re very happy together, Fiona.”

I tried to think of a subtle way to mention that I still think about her. But what do you say? There is no subtle way to mention you miss the curve of someone’s ass. 

When I touch myself, I sometimes think about Fiona, face down, bent over the coffee table of my old apartment, a video game paused on the television, her pants around her knees to expose the smooth skin of her raised ass. That was all I could think about, while I tried to make casual conversation on the phone at one o’clock. Her ass, and the way she used to writhe and moan into the carpet. 

I should not have called her. 

Nobody ever wants to talk about the good times.

And if you ever write to me, Edith, will you tell me that you have a boyfriend, too? Men don’t live as long as women. I feel certain I could outwait him. I want you. 

I want to make you writhe and moan into the pillow with your ass up. I don’t care if you collect your things afterward without saying a word. I don’t care if you slam the door.

Or I could moan for you, if you prefer. I could wail. I could call you daddy, or mommy, or Santa Claus. It is too late and I have had too much to drink. I wonder if you’re awake. I wonder if you have nights like this. 

Ann.

surprise

I got a haircut, short on the sides and chunky on top. I looked so different. It made me wish I wore glasses normally, because then I could have taken them off and I would have felt even more like Superman. At the bar I sat with my friends.

They didn’t see her and I didn’t point her out. Her dark hair was wet and short, sticking every which way. When she stood to go to the bar, her pants hugged her hips and her t-shirt was grey and tight. She had perfect breasts.

So I stood up to meet her. I leaned through the crowd at the bar so that my arm touched hers and I meant to say, “You’re beautiful,” but it came out just, “Beautiful.”

“Get a new line,” she said. She took her beer and started walking back to her friends. I caught up with her and touched her arm. She turned and shifted her weight, waiting expectantly.  “Alright,” she said. “One more try. You’ve never seen anyone with eyes as pretty as mine? Don’t you know me from somewhere?”

“I want to pull your shirt up over your face,” I said. “and leave it like that, so that your chest is bare and your face and arms are covered. I want to kiss you through the shirt and have your makeup stain it. I want to pull your pants to your knees and your panties half that distance. I want to open the bathroom stall while you’re blind and full with my fingers, so another man walks in and sees you blindfolded.”

She didn’t say anything. She took a sip of her beer and looked me up and down. Then she smiled. She had a beautiful smile. If this were a toothpaste commercial, I’d say her teeth were luminous.

“What’s your name?” she said.

In the bathroom I did pull her shirt up over her face, but her makeup didn’t stain it. Her breasts were soft in my hands, and I trailed my fingertips over her skin. I ran them across her nipples, then back again, feeling the flesh swell as they hardened. Small hard bumps ran scattered around the nipples, like Braille. She kissed me through her shirt, hard, and I reached down to unfasten her belt.

When I let go of her t-shirt to pull her pants down, she used the freedom to pull her shirt the rest of the way off. She took me by the hair and pulled my head down to where her legs were opening. I kissed her stomach and her belly button and that invisible downy trail of hair. My tongue ran along the top of her pubic hair, and then pressed down through her cunt. It parted the hair and found the dry outer part of her and pulled her open to where she was wet. My lips and tongue and nose got wet with her while she pulled my hair, pushed me around, shook me side to side and up and down on her while the tip of my tongue fought to find just the right motion, something rhythmic and correct.

She shoved me back against my side of the stall, and lifted my shirt up over my face. She used it to hold my arms above me, but I could see through. I reached my hand out for the stall door, and she caught it.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Opening the door,” I said, and she shook her head. She lifted my arm back above me.

“No,” she said. “I didn’t like that part of your idea.”

She ran her tongue over my chest, through the small patch of hair in the middle, to the nipple on the right. She ran the tip around and then around the nipple again. She kissed it, then opened her mouth wider and took the whole nipple and sucked, then bit, and then moved on. She took my hands and kissed her way down my stomach. She put my hands in her hair, made fists of them, and used them to press her face against my pants. I was hard now, constricted by my jeans. I took her hair in fists and ground against her face. I pulled her hair hard and drove my zipper into the soft quiet flesh of her lips and eyes and cheeks.

“Wait,” she said. “Wait, this is boring.”

I was still pulling her hair, grinding my dick into her mouth as she spoke.

“What?” I said.

“This is boring.” She pulled away from my jeans and took my hands out of her hair and sat back against the wall of the bathroom stall. Her left breast had a line from the seam of my pant leg, just beside the nipple. “I thought this was going to be new, exciting, but you’re just going to fuck my face. Any one of those men out there could skull fuck me. I thought you were going to surprise me, startle me.”

I made myself look disappointed, and I made my voice really quiet. I muttered something, and she leaned forward to hear.

“What?” she said, and I let my lower lip shake like I was about to cry. When she rolled her eyes and turned away, I grabbed her shoulders and hollered as loudly as I could:

“Boogidy-boo!” I yelled and she screamed in shock. After that, she gave me her phone number and kissed me on the mouth. She made me promise to call her the next day. Her birthday.

Walking home, I thought about her mouth through the fabric of her t-shirt. I thought about her nipples and the rough way she had forced my mouth down on her. I thought about my bed at home and my stereo playing quietly while I masturbated. It was the beer and arousal combined, I think, that made me climb into the bushes between two downtown office buildings.

There were flowers here and the dirt I laid my head on was freshly turned. It smelled like worms and grass and roses. I couldn’t see the stars, because of the lights shining down, but I could hear the laughter of other drunks in the streets around me and that was good enough.

I undid my belt, opened my pants, pulled myself free. My hands were wet and grimy with mud, from climbing through the bushes, and it was cool against my cock. I was covered in dirt, scratched from the bushes, yellow light from above. I thought about her and realized that she hadn’t even told me her name. Just given me her phone number and squeezed me one last time through my pants before she left.

It didn’t take me long to reach that point where you have to slow down, where you can feel it rising inside of you and you realize that you don’t know where you’re going to put the come. I looked around for a big leaf or flower, something to take the place of tissue, but found nothing. So I climbed to my knees. I leaned forward with my left hand sunk in the mud and my right hand moving faster and faster, I thought about her tongue licking the very inside part of my ear, and I thought about her writing out her phone number on that scrap of paper and I came on the ground.

Then I re-zipped, re-buckled, and walked home. The shirt was caked in mud. In my mirror I looked more like Superman than ever before. I called the office, drunk, filthy, and left a message saying that I was sick. I wouldn’t be in. I didn’t know how long. I fell asleep on the floor in my clothes.

The next day was her birthday. The rain stopped by the time I left my house, and halfway to the address she’d given me, I found an old typewriter out by the curb with someone’s garbage. It seemed perfect for her and I picked it up without giving it a second thought. It was an old travel typewriter, like a heavy suitcase. The sort of thing Clark Kent would carry.

She opened her door and I swung the typewriter up and into her stomach. The weight of it knocked her backwards, pulled me by the hand on top of her. She let her breath out and I fumbled with the clasp on the typewriter and opened the case. I pulled the machine free, set it on her breasts. Keys were missing and there was ink and grime crumbling onto her. I was hard.

The typewriter was between her face and me. She reached around it to where she knew my belt was. She pulled at it roughly while I began to type. The ‘4’ stuck. She got me in her hand. The ‘8’ stuck. Through the typewriter I could see her breasts. The ‘8’ stuck again. I lifted the machine and dropped it on her hard. She gasped, and tears started running down the sides of her face from the corners of her eyes. I lifted the typewriter again and suddenly it was a giant needle in my hand. Her eyes went wide. She was thinking I might drive the needle deep into her heart and kill her. Her nipples were hard like my cock in her hand.

Instead, I stuck the needle into a giant balloon that was floating by. It burst. She screamed at the sound. There was confetti everywhere. I burst another balloon and she screamed again. But it was a delighted shriek. She was laughing. I popped another balloon and she clapped her hands. She kissed my penis. I surprised her.

the meteor shower

(trigger warning)

Is this really where I want to be? Stacking printer paper in an office supply store? Seriously? For how much longer? We’re all going to die. Death is taking another lick of my lollipop, and God only knows how many licks it takes before he gets frustrated and just bites into it. 

So, I’m quitting. Happy birthday to me. I’m almost thirty. The work isn’t terrible. But it’s never the actual work that’s terrible, is it? It’s the customers. Jesus fuck — the customers. 

This one walks over and sets the printer paper down, already staring at the little screen where the price appears.

“That’s not the right price,” the customer says and he slaps down a flyer that’s opened to a picture of printer paper. He’s jabbing at it. 

“Well, that’s last week’s flyer, sir.” I say. 

“Excuse me?”

“That’s an outdated flyer. We have copies of the new flyer, here, if you like.”

“You sent me this flyer, and I drove all the way downtown because of the price promised right here.” He jabs. “Now if you’re just going to give me more faggot excuses, I’d like to speak to your manager.” 

Classy. So, I pick up the phone and I call my manager, Wallace. Then the customer and I wait in silence. He’s probably sixty years old. Dressed nice, but not fancy. He has a shirt and tie, but no blazer. And it’s a shirt that’s been worn again and again. There are no crisp corners. A working man! Salt of the earth.

“How can I help you, sir?” Wallace says, coming behind the cash register with me, smiling at the customer. And the customer is nicer now. Of course he is. I watch while he explains the issue politely. He shows Wallace the flyer. Wallace hits a few buttons on the keyboard and everyone’s happy. The customer gets the discount he wants. 

It’s always the people who are paid the least who have to take the most shit. Otherwise Captain Angry there to go buy his five-dollar printer paper at another establishment. 

When he’s gone, I turn to Wallace.

“That guy called me a faggot,” I say and Wallace claps me on the shoulder warmly. He’s a nice guy, I think. Not the brightest guy in the world, but mostly good. I get a bit uncomfortable when he talks about women, like, he’s not really talking about people. But in general, Wallace means well. 

“Don’t take it personally,” Wallace says. “Everybody gets what they deserve eventually. In his next life, that guy’ll probably come back as a faggot himself.” Wallace walks off, and I’m left standing there holding the receipt for one packet of printer paper. That doesn’t make me feel better at all.

Wallace wouldn’t have said it if he knew I slept with men. I know that. He’s not a mean guy. Just stupid. Oh, so stupid. I stand behind the counter and I ring through people’s orders, just waiting for one of them to say something. 

By lunch time, I can feel a pressure behind my right eye that I am certain is my anger. It keeps on building and building until I don’t know what to do with it. 

In the faggot lunch room, Wallace is laughing with Mike, watching the faggot TV. I’ve been standing behind that cash register all day, angry. I haven’t been able to think of anything faggot else, and I bet if I fucking faggot asked him right faggot now, he wouldn’t be able to even tell me what he said. Long forgotten. Unimportant.

Anger isn’t making me feel better. But you know what does make me feel a little bit better? Sexual harassment. The look on Wallace’s face when I say, “Jesus, Wallace. You been working out? Your ass looks amazing today.” Just a flash of surprise and confusion. A bit of shame. And then I’m gone, back up the stairs to my cash register. 

I’m smiling now. I feel good, less helpless. I wonder if this is why straight men sexually harass women, to prove to themselves that they have power. They get yelled at by their own bosses and head back to the office to take it out on their secretaries. Hey, Janet, your tits look good in that top. 

Later that afternoon, when Wallace is helping some guy pick a printer, I walk past him again, and this time I clap him on the shoulder and look pointedly down at his crotch. 

“Come on, Wallace. Hide your erection, will you?”

“What?”

“It’s impolite to walk around with candy unless you’re gonna share.” 

I feel like a little kid, pissing on the bully’s gym clothes. Sure, there are probably better ways to handle this, but I can’t think of any. It’s better to make it a joke. And it is a joke, isn’t it? 

I get off work earlier than Clay does, so I usually walk down and meet him at the casino. Clay has birthday plans for me tonight. A surprise. I’m leaning back against the hood of his car when he comes out. 

He’s still in his uniform, his security badge yellow under the parking garage lights. He looks good in that uniform. He looks dangerous. I have a bit of a weakness for dangerous-looking men. 

I kiss him hello, then in the car I tell him about the customer,and about Wallace. But it’s my birthday and mostly I want to talk about something else. 

“What’re we doing tonight?” I say and Clay smiles.

“Tonight, sir, there’s a meteor shower,” he says. “I don’t know if you heard. It’s kind of a big deal. We’re going to go out to the country, where there are no streetlights, and were going to watch the sky fall.” This is Clay’s birthday surprise for me. It’s hard to believe he even remembers the meteor shower. He’s got no interest in anything like this, but I must have gone on about it one too many times, my voice all earnest, waving my hands in the air while I talked. 

Clay gets excited about things, too. It’s one of the things I love about him. He gets an idea in his head and it lights him up. There’s not a cynical bone in his body; everything is fun. Everything’s an adventure. It doesn’t matter what the plan is. He has dozens of plans. Let’s go to the movie on Tuesday. Let’s go to China. Let’s learn how to leave no trace at all in the world’s databases and let’s live off the grid. Let’s learn to knife fight. We saw an ad about that. Learn to knife fight using training methods developed for Russian Special Forces. The flyer ended with the ominous, “You don’t win a knife fight. You survive.” There is always more room in our lives for something so deadly serious.

And Clay’s enthusiasm is infectious. Now he’s talking about Wallace again. He wants to come into the store wearing a leather vest. I have no idea where Clay would even find a leather vest. He wants to wear a big fake cop moustache. A disguise. Wallace has never seen him, which makes me feel weird, now that we’ve said it out loud. Clay’s never been into the store. I’ve never been into the casino, either. 

“I’ll seem like just any other customer,” Clay says. “Oh this is going to be brilliant,” He’s repeating himself now. This is how you know when he’s really excited. He goes around in circles, and the idea is more exciting to him every time. He wants to get his friends to do it, too. Every queer he knows. Go in and blow Wallace kisses. Pat Wallace’s ass affectionately after he’s been helpful. Ask Wallace for his phone number.

When Clay’s around, I feel like I’m more exciting, too. That’s a good quality to have in a gentleman friend. I come up with plans of my own for us. Let’s try to befriend the squirrels that live in the walls and attic. Let’s go get some candy and stay up all night watching horror movies. Let’s sleep over in a graveyard, so the dead can visit us in our dreams.

I don’t fall in love very easily. It takes a long time and then, when I have fallen in love, I’m still not sure. I’m suspicious of myself. What if tomorrow I don’t feel the same? I have to wait, to be sure. And I wait and wait. I think I might be at that stage with Clay. I’ve been waiting for a while now. I have dreams about telling him.

We drop the car back at the apartment and unlock our bikes. I love biking in the dark. I didn’t think I’d get a chance to see the meteor shower tonight. I thought for sure he’d take me out to dinner or to some movie. Watching a meteor shower is amazing because to the human eye it just looks like dozens of little moving points of light. Thin streaks of light. Except they aren’t. They’re chunks of debris falling to earth. Fast and burning and where do they all come from? I’m not sure. They’re little bits of something else. 

Space always makes me think of infinity. The universe just keeps going and going and, when I think about it, it actually feels like my thoughts have to get bigger to understand. And then I get scared.

We bike out to the dark and find a perfect spot. We’re in a field with a hill blocking the streetlight from the road, the best place for us to stretch out and watch the sky fall. We lay down side by side on the grass and dirt, watching the sky. Beside me, Clay says, “There!” and I see it too, the first streak of thin light.

We watch for a while, until I get scared thinking about the yawning void of space and the maddening smallness of our solar system in it and the smallness of our planet in that solar system and of my own voice in the dark and I almost say, “I love you,” right then and there, but instead I pull him on top of me.

I like having his weight on me. I like the feel of his breath against my cheek and I like the feeling of being trapped, too. Pinned down. He kisses me and smiles, then tries to roll off me. I hold onto him tightly.

He pins my wrists to the dirt. He stretches me out so my belly’s exposed and he kisses my neck. He puts his mouth right up against my ear and says, “Nobody can hear you out here. Cry for help all you want.” And I struggle against his grip. He pins my wrists with one hand and with the other he pulls my belt open, shoves his hand down to wrap cool around my cock and I say, “No.” And I try to pull free. 

We forget all about watching the stars. He kisses me and I struggle against him just enough. “Let’s move,” he says. There’s a tree here. We stand up and we kiss in the moonlight with the stars falling and no cars anywhere and oh it’s all very perfect and romantic and all I can think about is I want him inside me. I want him to press his finger inside me.

He pushes me against the tree. I spin us so that he’s against the tree and I put his hand in my hair and make a fist of it. He’s smiling. He forces me down to my knees and I squeeze the front of his pants. Gripping a cock through them that isn’t fully erect yet, but doesn’t really need to be. I pull at the button. 

I open my mouth, looking up at him, and he takes my hair in both his fists and shoves my face down on his cock. My lips are forced open. Then further. I’m still struggling, my hands waving helplessly in the air.

He’s hard now. I make a choking sound as he reaches the back of my throat and I struggle. He pulls my head back to let me gasp for air and to force me to look up at him. He spits on me. His spit is thick on my face, and he says “Whore.” He shoves me down on his cock again, fucks my face while I dig my fingers in the bark of the tree, the zipper of his pants cutting against my lips and cheek, again and again. Then my hand is up his shirt, pulling at his nipple and leaving streaks of dirt on his chest while he uses my mouth. Then he pauses.

“Is this okay?” he says, looking down, and I can only nod. 

Yes.

I want him to come on the ground here in front of me, or to come across my lips. I want him to push my face into the dirt and pull my pants roughly down just far enough so he can get at my asshole. My knees are wet and cold through my pants.

Clay pulls me back by the hair and forces me to look up at him again.

“My turn!” he says.

And so I twist his arm behind his back and push him against the tree with his shirt pulled up. The bark is digging into his chest, and I’ve got his pants pulled down so I can get at him. My free hand is wet with my own spit, my finger pushing at his asshole. I use my body to hold his arm twisted between us. My teeth are tearing at the condom wrapper. I wrap my hand around his throat while I enter him. “If you make one sound, I’ll kill you,” I whisper in his ear.

When I come, I panic a bit, because I can suddenly see everything. I have my hand around his throat and I feel like I am just returning into my senses. Did we go too far? But Clay reaches up and kisses me on the cheek and then on my mouth and he says, “You’re beautiful.” 

Afterward, we watch the night sky, still half-naked. His chest hair is soft and I rest my head on him. The dirt and twigs are digging into the skin of my hip. My pants are still around my ankles. This is so quiet and would be such a perfect time to say, “I love you.” But you can’t say something like that just because the moment is right. It’s too seductive, having the moment be perfect. I would worry that I said it just because it seemed like the right time. The stars keep falling.

“It makes me nervous,” I tell him. One after another after another the streaks of light appear and vanish. “It goes on forever.” I sound stupid. Chunks of burning rock from God knows where, raining down on us. Rocks that are older than our whole solar system. And when our sun explodes and we are all destroyed, we’ll be rocks and chunks of I am not sure what. Maybe we’ll rain down on somewhere else.

On the bike ride home, we keep making wide slow turns from one side of the road to the other in the dark. We talk about Halloween, which is soon. I say maybe tomorrow night we should go climbing trees in the neighbourhoods we grew up in and Clay says maybe we could learn how to fight with our bare hands. 

Everyone should be able to kill a man with just their thumb. We could be ready for anything. There are whole martial arts devoted to just disarming someone. Just disabling them and getting away, Clay tells me. He knows just what I want to hear. My lips are raw and they taste a bit like blood and dirt and this is a perfect birthday.