But now that was no longer an option.
What did you see?
The bedroom was closer now; I could have reached out and touched the doorframe had I wanted to. My throat became dry, my lips pasty, and as I moved into the room I realized my entire body had begun to tremble. I made myself look.
It was empty like the rest of the house, but I saw the past—Linda’s bedroom—and all that had been there so long ago. The bedroom at the top of the stairs, the bed against the back wall, the mismatched nightstands on either side of the headboard, the clutter of overflowing ashtrays and empty liquor bottles. Garments stuffed into plastic clothesbaskets and strewn about the room as if thrown or dropped there, an ironing board against one wall, a dressing table with mirror and closet against another. Lipsticks and makeup, small bottles of polish and colognes and body sprays, tins of soap and powder rattling, clicking one against the other.
And what else? What else did you see?
“Jesus, God,” I whispered, falling against the doorway for fear I might otherwise collapse.
Candles. The shades all pulled tight and candles scattered throughout the room. Black candles. Who—why black candles? Why—
What else, Alan?
Pain pierced my temples like ice picks, and I brought my hands to either side of my head with the hope that clutching my skull hard enough might ward off the throbbing. Tears filled my eyes and dripped into the back of my throat.
The bed, moving and shaking, the headboard slapping the wall and the box spring wailing in rhythmic squeals as shadowy fingers cast from candlelight skipped along the ceiling. And sounds—words—no, prayers, but alien and backward, twisted and mocking.
Linda’s eyes, her body nude, slick with sweat and lunging forward then back with each thrust, her head hitting the headboard and her voice still deep and urgent even after her dark prayers had been recited. Good… good… good boy.
I shut my eyes but vision remained, refused to let go.
It is night and that makes no sense, because it is not night, not really. Neither was it night then—but here, in this dream place, it is night. I am lying on the floor watching TV, and she is sitting behind me on the couch. She calls me, gets my attention, asks me to come and sit next to her. I do, though hesitantly, unsure of her motives, and my own. Such motives and feelings are still new to me. I am still trying to decipher many of them, to identify them for what they are and why I have them, but I sit beside her anyway.
She turns her back to me, looks over her shoulder and smiles, tossing her hair. She looks like a model in one of those makeup commercials on TV; like a movie star. I’m afraid and angry with myself for feeling so nervous—I should be a man even though I’m not yet a man—I shouldn’t be afraid of a woman, a barely dressed beautiful woman who is my friend, who likes me and wants me to like her. Only a few short months before Bernard and I were huddled in the woods giggling over his secret pornography stash, unaware that such childish things were mere tips of the flames inching closer and closer to us even then.
Lust and fear are one as she raises her hands to her breasts and cups them.
She asks me to please unhook her bikini top. I laugh. This can’t be happening, but it is. She’s serious; she means it. Don’t worry, she says, I want you to.
While she continues to encourage me, I struggle with the plastic hook, my hands shaking.
When it finally comes free I feel a rush of excitement along with nervousness in my stomach. My face is so warm I know it must be flushed bright red. I worry that I look idiotic even as I stir beneath my shorts, feel it press angrily against my thigh.
She holds her top in place now, her hands the only thing preventing it from falling to reveal that which lies beneath, that which I have seen only in quick flashes and glimpses.
She is the most frightening and beautiful woman I have ever seen. So many times in recent months I have wondered if this would happen, and now that it is I’m unsure of what to do. The confident and skilled lover I am in my teenage fantasies is in reality an awkward and frightened fool—and besides, this is different, this is—I hate myself for being so weak and childlike. I smile, knowing this is wrong but gazing at her tanned skin just the same, a smooth bronze, soft and warm. She knows I’m looking.
Her hands fall to her lap and the top follows, fluttering to her knees, the strings dangling across her shins. Her bare toes, painted light pink, wiggle into the carpet and she turns at the waist so that we face each other. She slides one hand between her legs, rubs at the front panel of her bikini bottoms, and with the other reaches out and touches my face, strokes it gently with her fingers. Her hand slowly pulls my face toward her, toward her chest, and I go, I allow her to draw me there and to push my mouth against her. Her brown nipple brushes my bottom lip, shrivels, tightens and hardens. She moans quietly, her breath escaping in a series of murmurs.
I suckle, my mouth working, pulling, my teeth nipping as she forces me closer, crushing my face into her until I think I might suffocate. All I can smell is her skin and tanning lotion mixed with perspiration and perfumed deodorant.
Why I think of God then, I don’t know. I think about my father too, wonder if he can see me, can see what I’m doing from wherever he is. I envision my mother next, sitting at the kitchen table like she so often does, sipping a drink.
I can’t breathe—I can no longer breathe.
Her skins seeps sweat, and I slip against the pressure. Her belly is flat and firm—but still soft—and the perspiration forms a puddle in her sunken navel. With a loud popping sound her nipple pulls free of my mouth, and I fall forward, against her, my face sliding along the damp skin between her breasts. She pushes me back—gently—then takes my hands and places them on her. I knead her breasts, squeeze them harder when she arches her back and moans again. They feel almost exactly as I imagined they would. I manipulate them with my fingers, watching her for a sign that this is what I’m supposed to do next.
It’s OK to be frightened, she tells me. It’s OK.
Then she is suddenly on her feet, her back to me again as she hitches her bikini bottoms with her thumbs and peels them down, revealing the two sculpted halves of her ass, milky and white against her otherwise tanned skin. Even her breasts are not this pale in comparison. As she steps out of the pants and drops them to the floor she smiles at me. I watch her buttocks bounce a bit, and she backs into me so that they’re against my face like two small pillows. She reaches around and again takes my hand, this time wrapping it around the front of her, pushing my fingers between her legs. She’s so wet and sticky I wonder if there’s something wrong, if it’s supposed to feel like that, but she pushes me deeper, still standing and grinding against my hand now.
I try to pull away. I want to stop and I’m angry with myself for being such a baby but I don’t know what to do or how to express what’s happening inside me. I want—I have to stop, I tell her, and it sounds stupid and immature but I just want to stop. I want to run out of there and forget this, I’m not ready, and she’s not the one I should be doing this with. I—I want to stop, I say again, shuddering as a wetness of my own explodes into my shorts.