“Stay down!” she commanded and he went still.
She reached around the front of his pants, unzipping them and pulling them down. Then he felt his underpants sliding down. Cool air caressed his backside.
“Stop it!” he cried.
She said nothing but he heard a rustling then he felt her bare skin against his. Suddenly her pelvis thrust forward and she bit his ear.
“You’re my boy now aren’t you, CC?” she said mid-thrust. “You’re my boy aren’t you?”
She rolled from side to side on his butt.
“Yes,” he said.
“Really, you’re my woman right now,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“I’m your woman,” he said and she bit into his cheek.
Cornelius started to cry. At first it was just a gentle sobbing because his pride had been hurt.
“That’s it, baby. Cry for me,” she whispered and he blubbered into the dust-caked floor.
“Harder, baby,” she demanded, rhythmically pressing her pelvis against his backside.
Cornelius wept.
There was a dying man back home in bed and the dead man in the closet. His mother was gone and all he wanted was to cry: to holler and yell and kick the floor with his shoes. At one point he bucked Colette off, then went still expecting her, wanting her to mount him again.
“Get up.” She had to help him because of his bonds.
“Lie down on your back on the couch,” she said.
And he did.
“If it doesn’t stay hard I can’t fuck you.” Her skirt was on the floor already. She pulled off her top.
When she descended he felt something so smooth and so right that he actually gasped out loud.
Then they were both moaning, her nails digging into his right shoulder.
He was looking into her eyes when he came. She smiled and he came again. When it was over she kissed his brow.
Later, when they were both dressed, Colette asked him not to tell anyone.
“No,” he managed to say. “I won’t tell.”
7
Cornelius didn’t call Colette again that week or the next.
At night he dreamed about her riding him and biting him. He held his breath remembering how he still had a hard-on even though he was afraid that she might kill him.
“Sex,” his father had said, explaining the birds and the bees when Cornelius was thirteen, “is the prime mover in social and species discourse. It is brutal and primitive and the one true indicator that human beings are animal and not of divine origin. That is why so-called sophisticated members of society deplore the sexual act, because it takes them away from God, pulling them into the realm of the primitive totem.”
Herman never got down to genitals in his oratory.
When Cornelius asked what sex felt like his father replied, “You can pick that up in any smut. Your mother can tell you about that. What I tell you here is the understanding of all things human. From architecture to xenial relations sex is the root, the infrastructure, if you will, not only of human activities but of all life. Once you understand that you will have mastered one of the four pillars of historical thinking.”
But Cornelius wasn’t interested in history after his first sexual encounter. He couldn’t think of anything but the rough-handed Colette. He picked up the phone and dialed her number three or four times a day but hung up before it rang.
He hoped that she would come to the theater and take him out for coffee. He wanted to see her but couldn’t call.
Eighteen days passed. Cornelius was sitting next to his father’s bed reading from the Iliad, a favorite of both father and son.
Homer created fiction that told us more about his era than any historian, Herman was fond of saying. He is the proof of the fallacy of ninety-nine percent of historians and their lies.
Somehow sensing his son’s distress, Herman returned to his former self and stayed — for a while.
“What’s wrong, son?” he asked when Cornelius drifted off from reading.
“There’s a girl I like, dad.”
“Does she like you?”
“I think so.”
“Have you kissed her yet?”
“She bit me.”
Cornelius had not seen his father grin for a very long time.
“She did? How did you like that?” Mr. Jones asked.
“It hurt and I was scared.”
“Because you are used to television kisses and radio songs about what love should be,” Herman said.
“We don’t even have a TV.”
“No we do not. But everybody else does. You cannot escape the preoccupation of an entire culture, son. Cultural content, for better or worse, is like a virus. If everybody else has it then you do too.
“But try not to allow these lies to blind you. Try to see why this girl is biting you. Tell her it hurts and maybe she shouldn’t bite so hard.”
“But that’s weird,” Cornelius said.
“Better to be a weird dog chop than a mass-produced hamburger.”
An hour or so after Herman was asleep the phone rang. Cornelius thought it might be his mother.
“Hello?”
“Is your father asleep?” Colette asked.
“Yes.”
“Then come on over to Manhattan, to the place we went last time.”
“No.”
“If you don’t I’ll come get you.”
Cornelius had no doubt that she knew his address. She had gotten his unlisted phone number.
It was near two a.m. when Cornelius climbed the stairs to the police apartment. Colette stood at the open door, waiting.
“Come on in, CC.”
She was wearing a purple dress that went all the way to the floor. But the straps were thin and the neckline was low. He could see her breasts.
“Take off your clothes and lie down on your stomach on the floor.”
“No.”
“Do you want me to take them off for you?” she asked with not the slightest hint of threat in her tone.
Cornelius took off his clothes but he lay down on the couch.
“I said the floor,” Colette said.
“No.”
She pulled off her dress then and lay down on top of him. She kissed his neck and he sighed.
“I wanted to apologize,” she said. “I didn’t mean for that to happen the other day. It’s just that you got hard when we were wrestling and that made me excited because you’re so damn cute.”
All of this she whispered in his ear; her voice raspy, her breath smelling of liquor.
“I won’t hurt you again, baby,” she said. “Okay?”
Cornelius nodded.
“Will you still be friends with me?”
He nodded again.
“Do you want to cry for me now?”
Cornelius tried to shake his head but a torrent of tears stopped him.
“Give it to me, baby,” Colette crooned, caressing his legs with hers, kissing the back of his neck. “Give it up. Let it out. Cry for me, honey.”
After a while Cornelius turned around wanting to make love to her but she held him off.
She whispered, “After the other day we need some time without it.”
“Okay,” Cornelius said. “But when can we see each other again?”
“Maybe you should be seeing girls your own age.”
“But we could be friends like you said.”
“Friends don’t have to see each other all the time,” Colette argued caressing his fingers.
“I need a friend.”
“Call me,” she said. “You can sleep here if you want and go home in the morning.”