I still have the pic she sent of her mixing drinks at her
father’s party, when she had to travel north, telling me she would not see me
again for a while, and all I wanted at that time when I saw that picture was to
be there with her, leaning close as she stirred up the ingredients as if a
witch’s brew I did not need to imbibe to fell intoxicated, and how much later I
sent her a text wishing her a happy birthday, as the whole world changed, collapsing
in on itself like a black hole, and how I felt the need to run and hide from
the mob she set loose, their torches and pitchforks full of vengeance, and now,
years later, I think of those two moments as bookends, my brain bouncing back
and forth between the two extremes, the good memory side by side with a bad
one, though after the second she seemed to show mercy on me, aware that I was
up to my neck in quicksand, and how I should not fight the inevitable, the more
I struggled the faster I would sink, when even now I know, I’ll still way over
my head, but wise enough not to send any more birthday wishes.
I don’t want to bang against you every time, though sometimes,
I just want to stay inside you, feeling you move when I move, filling you up
until it seems we are one in the same, injected so deeply, we can’t fell but feel
it all, even when we barely move, and I wonder, how it must feel to you, to
have me there inside you, the swell of me against you, you swallowing me whole,
when I can’t tell which part is me and which part if you, and I don’t care. I
could stay like that forever, like a hotdog wrapped in a bun, so tight we can’t
tell which one of us is moving when we move, where one of us ends and the other
begins, though eventually, we must surrender, I just don’t want it to be right
now.
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.
She would be bad rather than forgotten, this dark angel I
still sometimes dream about, hearing her voice in the dead of night, recounting
her exploits over which I remain jealous, wishing I could have taken part in
them, even though they happened long ago, this dream sequence in which she
remains the principal character, waking at dawn overwrought with guilt, when
she had no reason to feel guilty, being bad because she needs to be something,
and better bad than nothing at all