Desire (13 page)

I went into work the next day and spent a restless morning daydreaming about what I’d done the night before. In the cold light of day, it didn’t seem real. It seemed like an incredibly erotic film I’d watched rather than an experience I’d actually had. But a faint white smudge on the outside of the shop window reminded me that my public fuck had been very real indeed. All day, I made excuses to look at the shop window, focusing on the tiny smear and remembering the man’s dick as he shot his spunk at the window and the girl’s lips as she licked it off. My pussy pumped and swelled every time I replayed the image of it in my mind. I couldn’t wait to get home, eager to take Max to bed, where we’d fuck again, retelling each other the most sensual parts of last night’s adventure and talking about what it would be like to fuck in front of another couple again, and maybe have them join us. I watched the clock, counting down the minutes before I could be with Max, touch him, talk to him.

At five to six, I prepared to close the shop when two customers came in. Great, I thought, I’ll never get home to Max at this rate. But as they came a bit closer, I recognized them. I saw a tall, good-looking man and a woman whose face had been pressed close to mine, on the other side of the glass.

I
t’s nine p.m. and the sun is only just begin ning to set. A low red orb hangs in a streaky amber sky above the red roofs and white walls of this small Spanish town. In the street beneath our balcony, the local youths climb trees without ladders, throw each other strings of lights, wind them around the branches, and fix up banners between the buildings. All day people have been parading through the town, carrying statues and effigies, praying, marching, and singing beautiful, ancient songs that I don’t understand but are evocative all the same. But now that the religious ceremony is over, the real festival is about to begin. I’ve been told that music will fill these streets all night, alleyways will throng with bodies, and the dancing won’t stop until dawn.

I step back from the balcony into our hotel room. The city is dressing for the evening; I should, too. Lara is massaging after-sun lotion into her tanned, toned skin. As she smoothes the lotion into her limbs, they turn golden and glisten in the lamplight. Her task complete, she reaches for a white sundress that shows off her tan to perfection. I look at the long, dark hair that cascades to her bottom. She’s as brown and beautiful as any of the local girls, and I know that she’ll be the center of attention when we go out tonight.

I check my own reflection in the mirror: I am as pale as Lara is dark, skinny where she’s curvy, nervous where she’s confident, edgy where she’s sensual. Lara has orgasmic sex with every partner she chooses; I have never come, never been able to relax that way, although I would never tell anyone this. I think I’ve been close a few times, felt butterflies in my stomach when I’ve kissed a boy, but those fireworks that Lara talks about? It’s never happened to me. I guess some girls just aren’t programmed to enjoy sex that way.

We’ve been traveling through southern Spain for ten days now, and while Lara fries herself in olive oil every day I’ve had to carry a parasol and smother my body in SPF 50. I have nothing to show for my time in the sun but a smattering of freckles on my nose. Well, that’s not quite true: My already blond hair has been bleached almost white. Each fine, straight strand will look luminous tonight. I decide to wear the cobalt-blue sundress I’ve been saving for a special occasion. It makes my blue eyes, the only splash of color on my milky-white face, stand out. I may not have many assets, but I know how to make the most of those I do have.

Before we go to dance, Lara and I share a huge plate of paella in a restaurant in the town square, marveling at the enthusiasm of the town’s young people. Groups of beautiful young men stroll arm in arm through the square. Teenage couples kiss passionately, oblivious to the merriment surrounding them. Children, who, back home, would have been in bed hours ago, sit on laps, crawl under tables, or sleep on seats. Lara and I linger here, watching the people and absorbing the atmosphere. Even someone as uptight as I am feels the tension melt away, and I start to unwind. I feel my limbs loosen, and I’m even breathing more deeply, slowly, more relaxed. We stay at our table until the square becomes so full of people that I don’t believe there’s room for a single extra soul, and a very modern sound system starts blaring out Euro house. Those not already standing leap to their feet and begin to dance where they are.

“It’s early,” says our waiter as the clocks strike midnight and grandmothers dance with toddlers to the sound of a throbbing disco beat. “The night is . . . What are the words? . . . still young!”

Lara and I walk through the streets together, happy just to absorb this wonderful atmosphere. We turn heads everywhere we go, all the boys looking at Lara in her white dress. She looks like a bride, a princess. I feel like a ghost by her side. Lara nudges me in the ribs.

“Helen!” she whispers, excitedly. “You’re a sensation!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “They’re all looking at you. They always do.”

“Don’t be so sure,” replies Lara. “Listen.”

As I listen, I hear “
bianca guapa
,” which means “white beauty.” When I realize that they’re talking about me, I become a pink beauty.

“They’ve never seen anyone like you around here,” says Lara. “You’re a hit!”

Feeling a little more confident, I smile shyly at one boy in washed-out jeans and a pale-blue T-shirt. He’s the only one not whistling or catcalling to me, but I like the look of him the best. He looks like all the rest of them—tall, lean, tanned, and chiseled—but he’s silent, respectful, and there’s something intense about him that draws my eyes to his.

Lara gets chatting to one of the guys. Her Spanish isn’t much better than his English, but even I know what
bailamos
means. “Let’s dance.” And so a group of us follow him down a side alley to a little flamenco bar that appears to be carved into a rough hole in the wall. Inside it’s more like a cave than a club, the whitewashed walls curving over to touch each other in the middle, forming a ceiling that hangs low over our heads. An old man plays guitar while the women dance and make animal-like noises, whooping and clapping, and I know that I’ve stumbled across real flamenco whose sexy, earthy beat has pulsed in this city for hundreds and hundreds of years.

All the local girls do the steps, managing to look sexy and elegant whether they’re in high heels, sneakers, or flip-flops. This dance is in their blood; they were born to it. Lara doesn’t have flamenco in her blood, but she embraces the spirit of the dance, nevertheless, letting one of the local boys whirl her around by her hands until her hair flies out behind her and her feet are a blur. Even I can tell that she’s absolutely hopeless, but she’s trying, and she’s enjoying herself, and that’s what people find so attractive about Lara. I order myself a glass of sangria, content to watch her make a fool of herself, happy to blend into the background here in this club where the walls are the same color as my skin and my hair. But the boys have other ideas. They grab me by the hand, refusing to take no for an answer. I giggle as a couple of them whip me around, my feet all over the place, but it’s actually fun. Lara looks at me with pride in her eyes; I can tell she’s pleased that I’ve begun to relax and show a bit of spontaneity for a change. Well, there’s a first time for everything, even if I do spend more time keeping my vulnerable sandaled feet away from the stomping shoes of the locals than I do dancing. I’m passed from boy to boy, and the whole experience is a blur of denim, strong brown arms, dark curly hair, and white smiling teeth. And then, suddenly, I am still, and I’m in a different pair of arms. Whereas other hands had grabbed at my body, these arms pull me softly toward someone new. As if in a trance, I follow this boy in the baby blue T-shirt to a corner of the bar. My heart is beating fast as I dance with him. The chemistry between his flesh and mine has transformed me from a gauche, awkward girl into a real dancer. I am suddenly able to feel the music. My feet move in time with his, and my body is fluid and responsive. I have never been much of a dancer except at student discos and at friends’ weddings, but here, in a cave in a small town, with a stranger and with only the most basic music, I feel my body open up, and I let the sound flow through me and tell my body what to do.

“This is amazing!” I say to him, breathlessly smiling up at his big brown eyes. “What’s your secret? Who taught you to dance like this? Come to think of it, what’s your name?”

He doesn’t reply but smiles shyly back, and that’s when I realize that his English is almost nonexistent. He speaks three words in a soft voice that makes me shiver from head to toe.

“Guapa,” he says, stroking me, his tanned hand tracing the skin just above my cleavage and making my breasts tingle with desire. “Snow White.” He must have learned that from the Disney film. I look at him and realize he’s very young—he can’t be more than nineteen or twenty. I press against him, trying to know his body and encounter the slim hips that only young men on the threshold of adulthood have. I let my hands wander down to firm, skinny buttocks and sink my face into a hard, warm shoulder. And all the while we’re dancing, but it’s something that might stop being dancing if we let this go on much longer, because I feel the kind of sexual arousal that I’ve only ever known after about six dates and twenty minutes of foreplay. Here with this boy, this stranger, I am shrugging off ideas I’ve held all my life about what’s wrong and what’s right because my body is taking over. I’m slowly realizing that there are a lot of amazing things I might be capable of tonight and that dancing is just one of them.

That’s when the doors to the bar burst open and in throngs another band of people enter waving banners, carrying castanets and guitars, singing, and packing the dance floor tighter than ever. Before I have a chance to object, a guy pulls me into the middle of the room, where I carry on moving to the music, allowing myself again to be shoved from one partner to the next. But I don’t lose eye contact with my favorite dancer, always making sure that I know where he is, not wanting to break the spell, knowing that I’ll come back for him later. But then there’s another crowd surge, and the dance spills out into the street. I can’t believe an alleyway this tiny can contain so many heaving bodies, but it can and it does. I’m getting farther and farther away, and then I lose him, his wavy brown hair just another head in the surging crowd.

At that moment I see a face I do recognize. Lara, flushed cheeks beneath her tan, one of her shoes in her hand, a broad grin plastered across her face.

“Helen,” she shouts, grabbing me by the hand and pulling me toward the edge of the crowd, “I’ve made a new friend! Come and meet Paco.” She gestures toward a burly young Spaniard in a grubby T-shirt. “I know, he doesn’t look like much,” she says sotto voce, “but you should see the way he moves. There’s something about a boy who can dance, don’t you think?”

“Oh, yes,” I say, more to myself than to Lara.

Paco leads us back through more crowds. Street lighting is poor and intermittent, so we have to rely on the odd light from a bar or club spilling into the street, illuminating just a few feet. It’s hard for me to make out the features of the faces that pass by me in this half-light, and despite the size of the crowd, none of the men I pass are him—the only one I want. I pray for him to find me. I will it to happen. I feel that if he is near me I will know, that our bodies will draw together like two magnets. Now that he has awakened something in me, every body I touch as I pass makes my flesh tingle when they touch me, but none has the power to set my skin afire, not like he does.

We end up in the main town square, which has been turned into an al fresco disco for the evening. Dance music blares out, and some very dirty dancing is going on: The lambada and the tango are performed to chart hits. I watch the couples as they all move together in perfect time, reading each other’s bodies and knowing when to turn, when to step forward or back, when to lead, and when to let their partner take over. I’m jealous because I want to move with someone like that. I look around to see if he’s there, but somehow I know that this public, brash, dirty dancing isn’t his style. I perceive that he is sensitive and private.

There’s nothing sensitive and private about Lara and Paco, though, as they move together, taking center stage and dancing on a stone plinth in the middle of the square. From my position leaning against an olive tree, I’m half aroused, half embarrassed to watch their gyrations, which cross the line between dancing and foreplay. She slides her hands up underneath that greasy T-shirt of his, revealing a surprisingly firm belly underneath, while his hands are on her breasts and then playfully slapping her ass. I feel another stab of jealousy. Lara has boys after her like this all the time. I never get to meet anyone who turns me on, and now that I have, I’ve lost him in a crowd. I envy Lara’s casual sexuality and her confidence. When Paco slides a hand between Lara’s thighs and she tilts her pretty head back with a sigh of ecstasy I feel jealous and also a little aroused. I watch them, imagining that it’s my pussy being stroked through my panties, that it’s my body being pressed up close to a man who makes me feel alive, horny, feral.