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Authors: Jim Cunneely

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BOOK: Folie à Deux
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We have sex upon arrival. I still suffer from performance anxiety as we begin our scripted foreplay, unsure if I’m doing things correctly or if her pleasure is appeasement. She keeps a running count of how many times we’ve made love and updates me frequently. We started with a twelve pack of condoms so it’s a matter of subtraction but I wonder if she is keeping a tally somewhere for when we move past our first box. After nine times I still feel like I’m trying to figure out what sex is supposed to be. I have yet to figure out why other kids enjoy it so much. It feels good but all of the stress leading up is counter-productive.

A wave of depression overcomes me when I realize that I do not have to be accounted for until six o’clock tonight and it’s only eight-thirty in the morning. I’m trapped with no one to save me, no one knows where I am.

“Isn’t this wonderful? We have all day together and it’s just begun,” she coos.

“Uh-huh,” I mumble as I put my head back on the pillow hoping to find haven in a nap at some point.

We have sex four more times and by the third, I’m in pain. I’m embarrassed but keep quiet because she has never had sex with another man so there is no way for her to explain what would cause my physical reaction. We watch TV but can’t agree on what to watch so I pick up a magazine sitting on her coffee table. It’s a woman’s magazine from three years ago, impossible to hold my interest long enough to pass any real time. She senses my boredom and asks, “So what would you like to do?”

“Go home,” I think.

“I don’t know. What can we do?” I say.

She lists, “We can go for a walk, take a drive, put on a video, look at some French books, or make love again.” None sound appealing.

“Any of them sound good,” I say. It’s only one o’clock but I’m restless. The amount of fear occupying my mind is beginning to cause great fear. This sensation of being totally confined someplace I came willingly is foreign. I use all my restraint not to pace the floor.

I take a nap and she sleeps with me. Amazingly Carla is completely oblivious to how uncomfortable I am or is still shamelessly ignoring the signs. She comes on to me and I do not protest. I welcome her because sex represents time that I won’t look at the clock. When we’re done she reaches under the bed, pulls out a workbook and we lay in bed naked as she tutors me in French grammar. I’m again, happy just to pass time.

She brings me back to school as the buses are pulling out of the parking lot. I jump out of her car and run to catch mine. Like every other day that I skip practice to be with Carla someone asks me why I’m on the bus. This time I hear, “Hey, I thought you weren’t in school today.”

I come back with the only response that cannot be disproven, “No, I was there, you must have just missed me.”

Carla owns me, my essence stolen. She is the sole proprietor of my time, my thoughts and my whereabouts. She owns my truths and my lies and everything between. It is entirely possible that I have been present in my normal life yet invisible to whoever is questioning my attendance. I don’t feel like I’m lying as I affirm my place in school today because my mind was in school for a great deal of the day. Each glance at the clock was followed by a reminder of where I should be instead of where I really was.

Once home, after I throw my book bag in my room, I vomit a week’s worth of fear and anxiety. All of my thoughts leading up to this day were filled with unnamed dread. The day itself was worse than I could have imagined. I find it impossible to look at my mother but stare at my father, hoping he will notice that there is something wrong. Despite the fact that my mother is and always has been more in tune with the emotional well-being of everyone in my family, I think that my father should notice something with his son. Nothing is said and my life rumbles on with oblivion.

I jerk off. I jerk off a lot. Twice a night during the week. Six, sometimes seven times on the weekend. It’s more than just masturbating, it’s an escape. It’s a catharsis like vomiting or sneezing, arranging different parts of my head. There are only two constants as my life evolves, masturbation and sex. I try to grasp the patterns but just when it seems like I do, I’m lost again.

Sex in her apartment has two different itineraries depending on where we arrive. The loveseat leads to her kneeling on the floor, stomach on the cushion so that I can take her from behind. She moves her hips in every direction, writhing in pleasure. When the light is just right I can see her squeezing the crocheted afghan so hard that her knuckles turn white, moaning cautiously not be heard by her neighbors upstairs.

The bedroom is where the, “Beautiful love making,” happens. This is where we lie on the bed kissing and caressing one another. My role as the follower is to never act without her approval or in some cases, insistence. When she is ready she takes my head and pushes me down between her legs until I force her to orgasm.

After, she pulls my face to hers, reaches to the night table and opens a condom. She places it in my hand to protect me from her or vice-versa. She comes multiple times, looks at me seductively then says, “Now it’s your turn.” I orgasm quickly, releasing my pent up desperation to please her.

When she thinks I should be ready, she touches me in ways that force my body to betray me. The monumental struggle always ends with the same winner. Carla and the carnal always triumph over Jim and his intellect. Another condom comes out of the package of twelve and is placed in my hand. I hate the smell. I don’t know if it’s latex or lubrication, but it’s rotten.

When the odor hits my senses, it feels putrid and I feel polluted. She rides me the second time in such a violent way, absent any emotion that I fear she’s going to hurt me. I’m a merely a spectator until she is finished and falls beside me. At some point every single time as she rakes her nails down my center in reflection she says, “That was beautiful.” It becomes a necessary punctuation rather than a verbalized emotion. The whole event feels transactional.

Once, we don’t even leave the doorway. In what I assume are known as the throes of passion she swipes all of the papers off of her dining room table, sprawls herself out, and pulls me on top of her. She takes her legs, wraps each ankle around my hips, and puts me inside. She moans as I feel her warmth. As soon as I am completely in she takes her legs and puts them on my shoulders. I instinctively place my hands on her thighs anatomically above her knees but spatially below and for the most part remain still as she grinds against me.

She spreads her arms to grab each outer edge of the perfectly circular table. This is the most visual of all the times we have sex and turns me on incredibly. I cannot help but orgasm without checking for permission. She doesn’t even take the time to make me put a condom on so as I feel ready I pull out, so overcome by the waves of pleasure that I crumble to the floor. She immediately jumps down and envelops me with her entire body.

Instead of, “That was beautiful,” she whispers, “I guess you enjoyed that huh?”

I don’t. I enjoy none of it. Most of the time, I can dissociate from the whole affair, and be ready when she wants. I have assimilated quickly and normalized this routine. Every time my body tricks me, contrary to my reflections late at night, I hate myself. I have learned to separate the individual parts of me just like the detachable components of my mind. I grow further removed from the relationship that every male has with his penis, more controlled by it than able to govern my actions. I loathe my virility and the feeling must be mutual. My body must hate me too, otherwise why would I display such disloyalty to myself?

Given my choice I prefer the bedroom. The lights are off and there are no windows so I can close my eyes and be somewhere else. No matter where we go my body is fully functional. Stroke me and I will orgasm. At fifteen a male’s body may never work with better austerity. What she mistakes as my enjoyment is the simple precision of puberty. I can escape that truth no more than I can escape Carla.

My personal routine, after a day with Carla, is static and the only way that I have found to cope. I walk into my room, put my books down, gather clothes and walk downstairs to the bathroom. I start the water a click hotter than comfortable and put a mix tape in the player that serves as the abhorrent soundtrack. A tape made specifically for this purpose, comprised mostly of The Cure.
Disintegration
is the best album I’ve ever heard probably because I’m disintegrating me from me a little each day. I don’t know how to integrate anything into a life over which I have no control.

As soon as I rinse the shampoo out of my hair, I take the bar of soap and lather both of my hands followed by my flaccid
penis. When I work up an erection, I begin. I imagine the only eroticized picture that I own with enough clarity to orgasm. She doesn’t deserve this honor but I bring Carla to mind. I think of what it feels like to have her on her knees in front of me, to be inside of her. Warm and tight and constricting. I ignore the ugliness, I block that out. I can have sex with her in my head without the worries of anyone finding out and without thinking of the stain on my soul.

It’s not easy to come. I’ve just had two orgasms this afternoon and am desensitized to my sexuality but I need this. I need to scrub off the filth. The problem, the really big problem is that the obscenity isn’t on my skin. Its inside and no amount of scouring will cleanse that elusive grime. Soap is not a natural lubricant so my hand doesn’t glide smoothly and I have to continuously re-lather. It begins to hurt but I don’t stop even though I feel my flesh start to chafe.

My dad knocks on the door, “Come on Jim. It’s been twenty minutes.” Now I might be able to come. Here comes the familiar exhilaration of having to perform. It’s just like being back in the closet with only five minutes left in the period. If I don’t assure her that she made me feel good in those five minutes she will be upset. The pressure builds in my chest and at the base of my dick. The pleasure rises up past my insecurities, past the burnt skin rubbed raw and will cleanse me when I blow all of the afternoon’s sins onto the bath tub floor. I watch it wash down the drain.

Unfortunately, no relief arrives. After I catch my breath and stand up straight the hot water reminds me how I hurt myself but I prefer this pain. I shut the water quickly even though there is still soap running down the inside of my thigh. I wipe it off with a towel and sit on the edge of the tub, disillusioned by my futile pursuit for purity.

The scornful looks when I walk out of the bathroom are familiar. They’re the same ones I perceive on the faces of the students who watch me exit her room. Sometimes my parents joke, telling me they are going to take the lock off of the door. Or ask from a place of surrender, “What the heck takes you so long?”

I always say the same thing, “I was just standing under the water letting it run on me.” A lame answer but I don’t have the energy to care and what else can I say?

My dad reminds me, “You know, I pay for the water and don’t like it wasted.”

I so badly wish I could tell him that I’m paying for something every day with a currency neither of us can afford. Neither a shower nor a purge of any kind will reimburse what is taken from my intangible account.

After eating dinner, doing homework and trudging through some bullshit, one-sided conversation with Carla, I go to bed. My brother is in the room too, but usually asleep. If he’s awake, I tell him, “My penis is itchy and I have to scratch it.” Again, a ridiculous story, but all of my creativity is spent covering my tracks on a daily basis. He neither laughs nor questions me. He accepts my explanation and leaves me do what I need. I hate lying to him and sometimes try to wait until he goes to sleep because I don’t want this blemish of mine to taint him. But I need to rub this out so I can sleep. I jerk off yet again knowing that he is, thankfully too young to understand.

I’m hurt. Sore from hunting for obscure peace. I can no longer put my finger on the source of the ache but I need to even the score of the day. Carla claimed two orgasms and I’ve only marked one. I still think of her. I picture her genuflected, feverish with her mouth. It turns me on to think that she is willing to bow
down for my pleasure. I like to picture what should be embarrassment for obeisance to a teenager.

This second time lacks the pressure of someone knocking on the door. It is completely absent of the rush to beat the bell. It’s more reminiscent of the second time Carla takes me. I use my own body like she does. My flesh is raw and there is no mistaking the fine line where pleasure becomes pain. This is inexorably painful. It taps into somewhere in my brain where pain actually becomes pleasure; the self-flagellation of the penitent. As soon as the moment of ecstasy ends, the orgasm turns to ache. The throbbing in my right hand reminds me of this soiled necessity and each night I engage in this ritualized bludgeoning, I lose a little more of myself.

I reach down under my bed and grab the only T-shirt I’ve ever used to clean up the mess. I hide it under my bed to protect us both from ever being questioned. I love it, I hate it and I need it. I’m so exhausted and drained of life that I place it over the puddle on my stomach, hiding the last remnants of the day. I drift off with it draped over me, feeling dirty, hoping that tomorrow my T-shirt will have cleaned more than just spilled innocence.

BOOK: Folie à Deux
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