What I Did for Love (15 page)

Marilisa had left some cut-up fruit and yogurt in the refrigerator, and there were some hard-boiled eggs, peeled and sitting in a small bowl. I poked down a couple of pieces of pineapple hoping the bromelain, the bruise-healing enzyme in the fruit, would help ease my soreness. I was tired, sad, feeling empty and lost. I reminded myself to be strong. In three years I had become far older than my age, learning to sustain myself with faith and the sheer will that faith supported. I said a little prayer to my parents for my brother, and felt better. I would get some sleep. Tomorrow was Sunday, and Bredon would be coming home.

Ree and I took Bredon’s car to get him at the airport. Carlos, his driver, had picked her up first, and I was happy to see her after so many times that we had just missed each other in one place or another. Ree was always generous about the time I shared with my brother, so open-hearted. I thought she was wonderful.

Bredon had met her in college, he about to graduate, she an entering freshmen. They had “clicked” on their very first date, and had been together ever since. She too was from an old, publicity-averse family, though she had been warm and sisterly toward me since the first time Bredon introduced her to our parents and me. We liked her immediately, and it was a lovely kind of re-play of our parents’ romance. She was all that he wanted in a forever-love, and his feelings were so obviously reciprocated. After the bombing, as my brother steadied me, so Ree’s presence, always in the background during the worst times, was a place of steadfastness and renewal for him.

I just wanted to see Bredon for a brief while, and then planned to disappear so that they could have some private time before he flew off again. They had insisted we have dinner together. I had agreed, with the proviso that I was up and gone before dessert. Ree had laughed when I said it, and realizing what I said, I laughed too. Their time together
was
dessert, and more.

I was grateful that Bredon had found Ree, and that my future sister-in-law never questioned me about boys or about anything in my life. My mother had been the same way, which led to my trust, and my openness with them. Not that there was much to say anyway, when it came to boys. I had not gone with one boy exclusively, as so many of girlfriends had done, and I was only vaguely interested in a couple of the smarter boys I had encountered in my circles.

So the talk Sunday night, at a dinner catered in Bredon’s
apartment, was about his trip, the effects of Rand’s opting into the deal, and stories of people he met and encountered by chance in the countries he had visited. He and I were always humbled by the dignified good humor of so many of the supposedly lower classes, in countries filled with poverty and struggle.

I could see that Bredon looked a lot better than he had when I’d left him at his office the past week. Private jet travel had spared him much of the tourist fatigue that comes with security lines and tight cabin quarters. Beyond that he looked happier, more satisfied and confident, which reassured me, and after the main course I took my leave, with quick hugs and kisses, despite their gentle protests that I stay longer. I was thankful that Carlos was there to drive me home. It was late, and it felt sane and peaceful to return home without having to slink into a back door in disguise. Yes, disguises could give privacy, but true freedom lay in being oneself.

Before I went to sleep that night I started a list of things to do in the next two days, since I had no idea what shape I would be in after Wednesday’s waxing. I had only thus far looked at one video on the Internet, and did not know how long the post-waxing tenderness and pain would last. I would do more research tomorrow, but at the top of the list now I put “Plan B,” for the coming weekend of unprotected sex with Rand. The thought of it, despite all my sensible fears, started a warmth between my legs. I got into bed and felt around my still-furry wetness, thinking of how he had circled my clitoris with his tongue, and it was not long before my fingers and my fantasies gave me an orgasm that put me into a sound sleep.

I started my Internet research first thing after waking and having a cup of coffee. To deal with the crazy desire that Rand could make me feel, I chided myself into remembering how wicked he was to demand this unprotected sex. The graphic pictures we had seen in sex education classes in high school brought back the dangers all too clearly. I shivered at the thought that he had given me some sort of disease. Using the Internet to bring up pictures of their effects, could still make me squirm with their close-up details of sores, rashes, and warts. The pain and burning and long-term consequences were elaborated in print beside each set of pictures. Oh, ugh, oh I felt so crazy and disgusted over the whole situation I had agreed to.

Then I remembered last night, and the relaxed confidence Bredon had shown, the glow between him and Ree that might have been absent if huge financial losses loomed over him. It renewed my resolve to match Rand at his sex games, and enjoy it, the ultimate irony. I tried not to think of other women he had slept with, and what he had been left with.

I realized that today was one week since first meeting Rand, and so much had happened that the week seemed like a hundred years of days. We had had one night of true passion, which now had disappeared into a sexual bargain that would include being stripped of my adult woman’s furry growths. I wanted to know in detail what was going to happen, clicking avidly through lists of sites and videos. Knowledge is power. Yes, sure.

There were lots of online reports mostly saying that waxing hurt. Some blogs were arguments with each other about how much pain and how much after-effect resulted from waxing. They said the first time hurts the most. Oh, yay, just what I needed to read.

A video demonstrated how a woman waxed at home, and
how she eased the pain. I sighed as I watched her press each painful area she had just finished waxing, pulling the cloth strips off various parts of her crotch, then waxing inside her buttocks. I found myself clenching my teeth, resigning myself once again to the bargain I had made with Rand, and the whole reason for all of this.

Next I steeled myself and looked for videos of what I was sure Rand planned to do. The formal term was “sodomy,” which in modern language is anal sex. The first videos were only a bit graphic, more hint than actual visual instruction. There were varied posted comments about “taking it in the rear”: hating it, tolerating it, getting used to it, using it as a trading card, loving it to the point of orgasm.

At my high school while I boarded, I had only met one girl who admitted having had anal sex, and she said it was enjoyable. But she was a rather ditzy girl who also thought that marijuana was the kindest thing she could do to her body. I was repelled by the cloying smell of marijuana, making other girls think my sense of smell was warped. They dismissively ignored me in their many detailed conversations fueled by the tongue-loosening effects of alcohol, weed, and whatever else was being consumed during post-lights-out gatherings in dank places in the school basement.

My reserve outweighed peer pressure as I remembered my parents’ warnings about compromising videos that might haunt me forever. It amazed me that lovers posted naked pictures of each other, or sent pictures of their genitals. Exhibitionism was not my thing, and some of the girls at school were starting to send their naked pictures to their boyfriends. I thought it was stupid, and outrageous, I who was steeped in conversations about privacy that had started in early childhood. I was such an outsider to all of this. When I told my parents I preferred living at home to boarding, they transferred me to a private day school in the city. They did not question me closely about my choice, my
wise mother seeming to sense that a day school was a happier place for me to be.

So I was left with no girlfriend to tell me her experience, and the two boys I knew who were gay would probably have been horrified if I questioned them about men’s lovemaking techniques. The great film about two cowboy lovers, and the original story, did not help much either. The thought of wading through gay porn and trying to order it online was daunting. It was the Internet or nothing.

On the Net I found all sorts of bad videos and skewed explanations, long preachy discussions with no real information, and simply not enough graphic detail without spending hours exploring porn sites. I saw enough to learn that the woman should be on top at first, and I concluded that several tubes of lubricant, at minimum, were the true necessity for successful penetration. Picturing Rand’s beautiful penis made me feel the now-familiar sexual itch between my legs, and the butt plug he had used had not hurt. But that was not a penis thrusting, as the women described it in the videos. Oh, God.

While I was at it, I did research into an IUD as a possible substitute for another round of Plan B. But I did not plan to have sex with anyone after this next weekend with Rand, and I still had the trusty three-pack of condoms. Although the IUD was the best and safest birth control, it didn’t protect against diseases. And the IUD had strings that came down into the vagina and were supposed to be wrapped around the cervix, out of the way. I was afraid that I would be unlucky and have the possible side-effect of loosened strings that would hang down. I could imagine Rand feeling them and saying I had broken our bargain for raw sex. So I opted to stay with Plan B. I knew there were lots of counterarguments to my decision, but my mind was made up. What I still needed, though, was medical information I could trust, and so I put in a call to Ren’s office and within a minute I was told to come in on Tuesday morning, first thing. I knew the
receptionist had recognized my name.

As I continued to scroll through what seemed to be endless and often useless sites, messages came in from Robin and Dina. I quickly answered, saying I was in the midst of family stuff and that we could start to make plans next week. I was looking forward to resuming something that resembled a normal life, but even as I thought of it, I wondered if we should go out to meet some guys in the hope that we could find interesting male bodies and minds, and maybe even some delicious unvengeful sex. Rand had set the bar very high, and his name alone, as I thought about it, set me itching “down below”, as they say.

At nine A.M. the next morning I was in Ren Harris’ office. I loved that our doctor was Bredon’s friend and my special godfather. He and Brendon had been friends all through school, teammates and study partners, of one mind about justice, and had stood with Bredon against the bullies, to defend Tomàs. Ren and Bredon were only children until I was born. Then he was so fascinated and taken with this new baby girl in his best friend’s arms, he quickly saw me as his own surrogate baby sister.

“Dr. Harris will see you now,” his receptionist said with a smile. Her name was Annie, and she was a youngish woman who thought Ren and I and my brother were cousins. We had never corrected that impression. Being family simply made everything easier.

Inside, I gave his hand a little squeeze, and sat down. He quickly assessed how I looked, my coloring, my demeanor. He was holistic, looking at the total patient, able to assess their state of mind and state of being, partly through his science, partly through the intuitiveness that makes some doctors into geniuses. Rendell Carter Harris was such a doctor, and the many plaques, awards, and citations of excellence bestowed upon him over the years, attested to that. He was a doctor’s doctor, the one whom other doctors called when they were stumped by a case. He had a stunning record of finding causes and suggesting treatments
that had eluded even brilliant colleagues.

As Bredon’s best friend, their relationship always close, Ren knew some of the risks and perils Bredon faced in the financial world. They confided in each other, I knew, and Ren was going to be Bredon’s best man when the wedding finally took place. But I did not mention anything of Bredon’s current deal, for I did not know how many details Bredon had shared, and I certainly would not tell him of the bargain I had made with Rand. I knew, for all the medical confidences he kept, that his outrage at Rand would lead him at least to hint about it to Bredon, and the two men, knowing each other so deeply and for so long, seemed to sense each other’s secrets. If my brother knew any of it, all our worlds would explode. So I told Ren that I was there to ask him about a new boyfriend, leading him to believe I was asking about a boy my own age.

At first Ren was pleased that I had a young man in my life, but looked dubious about it after I told him, haltingly, reluctantly, that we were lovers, and that he wanted me to be waxed. The websites I had waded through had not mentioned infection from waxing, but all the science I knew told me that there were risks. Ren nodded yes, there were.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked, perhaps surprised that a young man had initiated the request, and then that I had agreed to it. He knew my rebel self. When I did not answer he said, “It will hurt, for starters.” He could not avoid the shadow of a grimace at the thought of wax pulling hair off those delicate parts. He looked at me. “You
have
to do this, I take it.” His eyes were warm, a sympathy he could allow to show because of our closeness.

I just nodded. The bargain with Rand was clear, and I was determined not to give him any excuse to back out of helping my brother. If his fantasy was my body without its downy covering between my legs, to look like a girl before puberty, so be it. Balthus would have been proud.

Ren must quickly have surmised something about the situation, because he did not try to dissuade me further. He studied me, which I pretended to ignore, and gave very serious instructions. “Make sure they use antiseptic technique. Lots of washing, lots of alcohol, lots of sterile cloths. A person getting waxed can develop a folliculitis, a staph infection, the hair follicles can become infected. Come see me afterward if you suspect the least trouble. And use these wipes when you get home,” he said, quickly filling out a prescription in his neat, un-doctorly hand. “They might burn, but then, as the burning passes, you can use this,” and he wrote another prescription for a numbing gel.