I keep thinking I see her reflection in the store windows
when I walk the black from where we worked to the German bar, outside of which
she surrendered her first kiss to me.
She’s not really there; neither is the bar, as if punishment
for all the carnal sins I’ve committed in my imagination since, reshaping that
night long ago into something other than it was, something grander in which I
got to play a starring role, my imaginary fingers slipping through the space
between the buttons of her blouse, my palms encircling the swelling I find
there, fingers pinching the tips until their rigid, this madness of hormones
that keeps me aroused, shaping my world view as I stare through the glass of
the German bar where I see ghosts, the barstool on which she sat, painting into
the vacant space the wine glass with the smudge of her lipstick on it.
I make love to her in my mind over and over, again and
again, reliving and expanding on that scene, remembering the quite real kiss,
and all the paraphernalia I have added to it since, always in need for more.
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
Something stirred in me when I looked in her eyes for the first
time, something dead or at best, long asleep, her eyes thick with mystery,
presenting me with a puzzle I needed to solve, not merely wanting to do
something with her, but something I’d not done in a while with anybody, those
eyes staring out at me from a shell of her own, she hiding from the world just
as I was, only in a different way, so that she risked little and exposed less,
even when our anatomy connected. I could only push in so deeply before I was
forced to stop, too close to that secret part she kept private, even penetrated
as she was, later learning she would never give that part of herself up, to me
or anybody, we could only go so far.
The fact of the moon showed between the jagged teeth of the
city that never sleeps, a sneaky Pete who watches what transpires on this side
where I wander, the stone walls of the precipice looking over my head, and, of
course, I think of her, now years out of date, her fate taking her places I
cannot possibly reach, like the surface of the moon, and like that moon, I
sometimes feel half hidden, always almost obvious, yet unable to surrender,
condemned to be condemned, my face reflected the way the moon’s face is
reflected on the uneven turbulent surface of the river at my feet, this flow
constantly churned up by the parade of ferries, and tug boats, and cruise ships,
many of which settle here near me or across the river in ancient docks, as I
stand and clutch the rail as if scared to fall, this place a memorial to something
long gone yet vividly remembered, the moon light on the river top a perpetual
recollection of how fragile love can be, even when not misguided the way mine
was. I am the moon peeking out between the skyscrapers, pretending I cannot be
seen when I always am, always too exposed, feeling as broken as the river top,
feeling as if the world will end if I rise too high or fall too law, scared to
rise above the skyline where I have nothing to hide behind, when even the dark
sky exposes me.
I watched it happen as if a porno movie, male bodies moving
over her, beasts getting their piece, while I sat helpless staring, a pathetic
19 year old with the illusion she was my girl and would stay loyal.
Sledge Hammer Harry had warned me about her when I got the job
in the print factory where she also worked. She had slept with his son and law,
and likely other workers at the factory.
Too young, too much in love with a slightly older woman, I
didn’t listen.
I paid no mind to the stories about her nefarious deeds and
her insatiable appetite no ordinary man (least of all me) could satisfy, such her
high school reputation and what she did under the viewing stands with the
entire team, or that camping trip she took in Colorado where she tried (and
largely succeeded) in fucking one man after another until she got to them all
and still felt horny.
I though all that would end when she took up with me and we
moved to LA, getting an apartment of our own like a married couple.
The knock on the door was the beginning of the end, a census
taker who became taken with her, and her with him, despite my being in the same
room with them, leaving me relieved when he finally vanished back into the
night out of which he had come, showing up a few days later with five of his
friends and a shit load of drugs in order to party, distributing LSD as if it
was candy, and neither of us knowing much gobble up the pills as such.
I drifted into a haze, unable to distinguish real from unread,
and she, right from wrong.
The census taker taking more than the census, hands plying
her chest, laying her down on the oriental rug to take even more, he followed
by his friends, all of whom smiled at me in my stupor, she laughing as if each
of them was an old friend, taking turns at each doorway, front and back and up
top as she kept her mouth busy, and later, when they had gone, she telling me
it was no big deal, telling me I needed to get used to it, that it would happen
again.
Mistresses keep their sissies in line by keeping them aroused,
letting their hormone simmer until they need to perform.
I don’t have that problem, I’m always aroused, a low hum
that vibrates through me 24 hours 7 days a week, not loud enough to get erect,
a kind of quiet self-torture I must endured, having no adequate way to satisfy it
– our lives dictated by things beyond our control.
I should have become a priest like the nuns suggested or
maybe a nun to justify my lack of release, while I envy those who live their
lives without constraint, who trade partners like baseball cards, who can
collect a temporary harem with just the snap of a finger, the men and women who
have no shame, no fear of punishment in the afterlife – while I constantly hesitate,
scared to offend, and so end up in a puddle full of guppies in a world where
only the sharks thrive.
I can picture her in leather, head to toe, though I doubt
she can, a chameleon that slips n and out of our lives, with each new shell she
adopts, providing her with a new, unrecognizable skin, she shimmering in the
night before she vanishes again.
I don’t see her as cruel, even though she sometimes seems to
be, finding strength in the perception she can control us, when in the dark of
night or the dawn of day, she has her doubts, as this mistress loses vitality
and must turn back into a little girl, leaving behind on the dance floor
perhaps, one of her spike-healed boots, aching for Prince Charming to find her,
he neve does, but she never stops trying,.
They walk hand in hand along the boardwalk, the tall boy
with red hair, a shorter boy whose hair is black and neck graced with tattoos,
two kids straight out of a time when I was one of them, only then I came to
places like this in search of girls, always going home empty-handed, when this
is not the case for these two, who like us are not part of the popular set,
mocked by jocks, beaten up by hoods, held together by the common terror of high
school, needing love popular girls won’t give them, yet somehow managing to
avoid the wasteland our generation was forced to confront, these two walking
hand in hand, defiant, battling the same loneliness, but armed with the arms of
each other. I envy them, these two walking proud, here in a place when at their
age, I felt so lonely.
History, for the unwary, tends to repeat itself, and at this
late date, I wish it would, to go back, pick up the pieces of what I let fall
apart and do it all over again, avoiding the pitfalls that caused the catastrophe
in the first place, this need to feel what I felt then, for real, the tender
touch, the brief embrace, the gentle kiss, dark talk in the dark that so
stirred up my hormones, stirred me for fervently than any witch’s brew, this
spell I fell under then to fall under again, though I know, I never will, the
bits of past we wish for never come back, click our heals or not, no magic balloon
to return us to Kansas, no ruby shoes, no broom stick, only the memory, a history
that flatly refuses to return, to bless us with a second chance in a world
where such dreams never come true.
All the green got used up for St’ Paddy’s Day. I stroll the
side of a firm across from a city that never sleeps, the ground strewn with brown
from before the storm, the bare branches of trees showing the tips of buds,
like lips waiting for a kiss, desperate for the new season to come, the sun
shimmering on the surface of the choppy water, reminding me again how life goes
on when all else seems devoid, the river, this life, every moving towards some
ultimate destination, all things changing, all things renewed, even if at time
maybe too soon, as I become just one more fallen leaf as I seen redemption and
rebirth
