In these closing days I’ve come to accept that I might never
get what I wanted from the start, although exactly how I feel remains unclear,
yet still tender, coals from a blaze I once embraced, the intensity of which
has long faded, even though I still feel consumed, something occasionally sparking
to life what all seemed dead, when we all knew from even in those earliest
days, a fire this hot could not endure, no fire no matter how hot every does,
Blues filling half the days this time of year when darkness lasts the longest,
and I feel the chill of winter deep in my bones, aware of the shreds of cloud
that covers my love life like a shroud, the land scape littered with hints of
you, embers that still provide me with just enough warmth – if never hope,
raising me out of the apocalypse of my own creation, restirring coals just enough
to feel a bit of warmth again, your face, your presence, your ever-lasting spirit,
haunting me, even though clearly remote, the slanted winter sun doing little to
illuminate my world, simply giving me glimpses of what used to be.
I still singe my fingers on her, the way I always did as a
kid in my grandmother’s kitchen, told not to touch the flames, I can never
resist,. Even this late in the game when I ought to have learned from
experience and yet cannot hold back, to touch or tase, even though she is far
too hot to handle, too sweet and not get stung, I can’t help but let myself get
singed, again and again, even in memory, even when distance should make it all
safe, a remote romance, unrequited, as best it should be, I know if allowed in
her kitchen I will only cook myself, singe more than just my fingers, so I
settled for recollections of the burning I felt back then, when we came too
close, her open flames roaring over me until my wings melted and I grew too
dizzy to think, and not all this because of what I might feel when touching or
being touched, but for the face she is what is, an irresistible flame that
still illuminates my life, and I cannot help wishing to be near her – too near.
My best friend Dave tells me we’d get a lot more sex if we
went bi.
Since I’m 14 and he’s 13 and we haven’t had any sex at all,
this would be a vast improvement.
We’re not even sure exactly what Bi is, and our understand
of sex is what we glimpse sneaking peeks at my uncle’s copy of Playboy.
I’m jerked off exactly twice. Dave does it more than he will
admit.
I vaguely connect Bi with being gay, a word Dave would never
use, even in private, but we both know gay means having sex with another man.
How does someone get to be Bi, I ask.
Dave says he knows someone who might teach us, a woman his
mother knows, who he has come to call his aunt, though she’s not related.
Teach us? Are there rules to being Bi? And will be really
get more sex if we learn how?
On the off change he may be right, I accompany him. I definitely
want to get some sex before I get too old.
His aunt lives in an old house on the east side of town, in
a once respectable neighborhood that since gone to seed.
We need to take two buses to get there, and up a very high
hill on top of which the house sits.
It looks haunted.
I tell Dave I want to go home.
He calls me chicken; so, I change my mind.
When we get to the porch Dave rings the bell, the echo of
which resounds deep inside, followed by the clatter of footsteps. When the door
opens, we see a very pretty girl, older than us, maybe 20, Dave giving me a
shit-eating grin and says, “See, things are already looking up.”
Only it all feels a bit strange to me, especially the girl,
but before I can put my finger on exactly what, she skips off to get the “mistress,”
who turns out to be a much older woman (maybe in her 40s), dressed almost all
in black, with black hair, black eyelashes and a penetrating stare.
Dave says this is his aunt; I think she is a witch.
She smiles when she recognized Dave – but it is a cold
smile, and I’m uncomfortable with the sideward glance she gives me.
I leave it to Dave to explain what we want.
Her smile changes, not any more friendly, but amused, as her
eyes dialate and I see our reflection in them, we, looking very much like the
lost sheep we are.
I nudge Dave again, titling my had towards the door as if to
make my case again to go home.
He ignores me.
The woman tells us to follow her as she takes us up a large
set of stairs, overhead there is a chandieller and I think of the horror movies
Dave and I sometimes watch on TV at home.
The room might have been a living room once, but has since been
converted to something darker, racks of clothing in one corner, and an
assortment of tables, chairs, benches and such around the room, chains hanging
from some of these.
The woman pauses near the racks of clothing and looks back
at us, her dark brows rising like question marks on her forehead.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asks.
Before I can say no, Dave jumps in and says “Definitely,”
perhaps thinking if we do this we might actually meet someone from the pages of
Playboy.
“It will take some time,” the woman said. “You’ll have to
return her often to get trained.”
“Trained?” I ask, thinking maybe Dave had actually hit on
something, when in the past all his schemes came to naught.
“We’ll start you off simply, with the basics, and later we
can move on to the more sophisticated things.”
She studies us for a moment, then reaches onto one of the
racks, coming up with two pink panties.
“Try these on,” she says. “They look like they will fit.”
“Those are girls panties,” I say.
“”Exactly,” the woman says. “You’ll wear them under your regular
clothing to get used them. Later, we can fit you for sleeker things, dresses
and braziers.”
“Why would we want to do that?” I asked, my voice shrill.
“To get used to become girls. You did say you were serious
about this, didn’t you?”
I want to say that I want a girl to have sex with, not to
become a girl, more than a little confused.
Did Bi mean becoming a girl? Or did it mean something else?
She seems to want to make us into something other than what
we assumed, and I nudge Dave again, who is like a deer caught in headlights, is
staring at the panties as if he’s tempted to put them on.
“Dave!” I said tugging at his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
But still he doesn’t move, even when I try to pull him. He
just stares.
She’s his aunt, not mine, so I don’t have to stay. Giving
him one more chance to come with me, I then head back the way we came.
I don’t want to be bi, I tell myself as I rush out the front
door and down the long hill back to the bus stop. I don’t want to wear girl’s panties. I just
want to have sex.
I don’t hear from Dave for a couple of days, then see him on
our way to school. He looked uncomfortable. He would not meet my gaze, but kept
tugging on his jeans as if they were too tight. I don’t want to know why, and
we never talk about it again, although sometimes when I stop at his house his
mother tells me he’s not home.
In the dead of night, I waken, or think I do, seeing her
shape, I think, hovering over me, a spirit I dream of often even after all this
time, lips so red I suspect she has dipped them in blood, maybe mine, with
fingernails to match as if in the throes of passion, she has scratched my chest,
my face or back.
I see, I think, her dressed in white, a sprite, whose open
buttons show the bulge of her breasts, that slope over, which I run my fingers
over them, or tongue, pinching the typs until stiff enough for me to sip.
I do not recall the flavor, only the texture on my tongue,
rippled like gravel except for the very sip which my lips encircle, be this
dream or not, I still live it, waking to the illusion that it might just be
real.
