I dropped the pencil then covered my lap. My arm, where she’d touched me, was intensely warm.
“Will you pay attention in my class, Tyler?”
“Yes, ma’am.” God that felt good. What if I got on the floor? My cock twitched. I wanted nothing more than to jerk off at her command. If only she’d tell me to do it. Call me a fag then say, “Jerk off,” until I shot a load, which accidentally got on her shoe, so she’d tell me to lick it.
Ms Ryn eyeballed me like, almost, something passed between us, recognition or acknowledgment, something. “You may go.”
You may go. Loved how she talked like that. I stood holding my backpack in front of me but then didn’t move or couldn’t or didn’t want to, something. Ms Ryn had walked to the front of the room then noticed I was still there. “Is there something else, Ty?”
A lot else, but how did you say that to a teacher?
That night in the shower, I jerked off imagining Ms Ryn. Writing You will pay attention in Ms Ryn’s class while she breathed in my hair before she pushed a hand inside my shirt to pinch my nipple hard. I came a bucket of jizz. And I groaned so loud I slapped a wet hand over my mouth worried maybe Mom might have heard me.
In high school, I used to skip school to smoke cigarettes with these other jerks, and of course we had no idea why we skipped school and smoked except we needed to appear tough. That was important: look tough to the chicks. Except I fantasized a woman who led me into all kinds of things: handcuffs, rim jobs, dildos up my ass and hitting me if I said no. And I do mean slapping the shit out of me.
Once, while a chick gave me head in the front seat of my car I said, “Would you hit me? You know, across the face, hard as you can?”
She’d shown me this google-eyed stare. “What?” You really would have thought I was the biggest moron on Earth by the look on her face.
“I don’t know. Never mind.” I’d pushed her head down and focused on the sensation of her mouth on my cock, but mostly on a voice in my head, which was supposed to be hers. “Sissy little piss ant, don’t you dare come.”
“Oh, fuck, fuck.” I’d shuddered, shoved my hips forwards, and then held the girl’s head as I’d shot off inside her wet mouth. Fuuuck.
“Geez, Ty, you could have told me.” The chick had twisted away to wipe her mouth. Maybe she’d been mad, thought I was scum.
“Maybe you should, you know, pay me back or something, punish me.”
The girl had sighed. “Just tell me next time, OK?”
It wasn’t Mom. I know that would be an assumption: Mom knocked me around, under-mined my self-esteem, something. Mom was tough; she had to be. She raised me alone, and for a while we were dirt poor until she clawed her way into a good job. I respected Mom, thought the world of her actually, but there wasn’t a Freudian connection. Mom never did anything out of line with me.
I didn’t chicken out that Wednesday night. I drove to Elmore Park. Straight there. Into the arms of Fate. In the parking lot, I shut the car off then pocketed my keys before working my hand around my phone, bit of cold warmed by contact with my body. When I got out of the car, I inhaled oak trees, my own anticipation, then started across a stretch of grass. I walked fast, almost like it was a race. I knew where the fountain was. The sky was dark now, and the moon was a sliver, which reminded me of a woman’s fingernail.
When I got to the bench I sat. Then waited. When I looked at my phone, I saw I was twenty minutes early. Then I was on time. Then she was ten minutes late.
Fuck, had somebody snowed me? I started to think of ways Micah could have orchestrated the whole thing then imagined getting back to the apartment and him waiting there so he could laugh his ass off then say, “Whatever, asshole, sit down and jerk off.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket, ready to call him, laugh it off, hide my disappointment, never admit he’d nailed my exact fucking desire, and then I saw something near a light pole. A woman. Yeah. Leggy. Yeah, just over there.
“Hey,” I tried to say, but nothing came out.
“Hi, Tyler.” Same voice from the phone but clearer — not syrupy or husky either, just calm and collected. She stayed by the light pole looking at me, I guessed; therefore I couldn’t make her out like I wished I could — just a leggy figure with a backdrop of light.
“Hi.” Finally I found my voice.
The enigma stepped closer. She wore a leather jacket, pants and boots with a heel. Her heels clicked the pavement. I had no idea what else to say, so I stared at her, probably with my mouth open.
“You’re cute,” she said.
“Thanks.” Relief, she thought I was cute. “Chicks tell me I look like this actor, Jonathan Brandis, but he’s dead now; anyway, I get told there’s a resemblance.”
“He committed suicide,” she said.
“Yeah.” I swallowed.
“So what did you have planned before I called?”
“Just hanging out with this guy I live with, Micah.”
“Did you tell him you’re here?”
“No, not really, no.”
“Do the two of you fuck each other?”
Bam. I liked that. But sure, I got nervous. “Nah, I mean we haven’t yet.”
“You want to, though, don’t you? You like boys.”
“Well, I haven’t ever been fucked by a guy.”
Silence.
“We jerk off together a lot.”
Silence.
“I’ll do whatever you tell me.”
“You will?”
“Yeah.”
She stepped a couple of feet closer. “You go to college?”
“No. I mean, not yet, maybe later.” I swallowed again, harder. She smelled like something sharp. . and sweet. . like apple cider in the sun.
“You work?”
“Yeah.”
“Doing what?”
“Nothing cool, just deliver pizzas.”
“You make good tips?”
“Well, sometimes.”
“Have you ever delivered a pizza to the wrong house?”
“Once I did.”
“Did she punish you?”
“Huh? Oh.” I laughed, or my voice cracked, something. “No, it was a dude.”
“What happened then?”
“Well, the right house was just around the block, so I got there on time.”
“His pizza wasn’t late?”
“Nah, I’m usually early.”
“I noticed that.”
“Yeah well, that’s me.” I laughed again, incredibly nervous. “Hey, you want to sit? You can sit if you want.” My voice had just cracked again. Shit.
“I have to go,” she said. “But there’s a restaurant on Franklin Avenue, Three Brothers, know the place?”
“I’ve heard of it, nice place.”
“Be there tomorrow at eight. Dress nicely and comb your hair.”
“OK.”
“When you get there tell the host you have a reservation; give him the name Ivo.”
“Your name is Ivo?”
“Listen.” Her voice had taken on an edge.
“Sorry.” My skin got a chill. My cock twitched.
“A young man will bring a basket of bread to the table and a pitcher of water.”
“Cool.”
“That’s all you’ll be having.”
“No problem.”
“Don’t request anything else.”
“OK.”
Ivo was silent, a sinewy shifting silhouette with a blade of light across part of her face. I said what popped in my head next. “The name Ivo, it’s very cool.”
That’s when she laughed, and the sound of it was like fork tines dragged across my ass. Then: “Shut up,” she said. “And. . get the fuck out of here.”
I jumped off the bench and went; I was very turned on.
When I got back to the apartment the place was dark and quiet except for the ten-gallon fi sh tank across the room. The tank light was on, giving the water a violet hue, and the fi lter gurgled like a fountain. I stood at the tank a minute and stared at the fi sh, mostly mollies and neon tetras, but we also had a betta in there. Naturally solitary and very aggressive, the betta was blue with fl amy feathery fi ns. It glided among the rest of the fi sh as if totally disinterested. Then it approached the glass, and I would have sworn it looked at me as it opened its mouth. I’d heard they had tiny razor-sharp teeth.