Memoirs of a beatnik (3 page)

I lay still for some time, waiting for the soft shivering in my skin to stop, feeling the waves of chill that left my skin in goosebumps and my nipples hard and high, the drawing, subtle sweetness in my groin, while my fingers played idly in Robin's soft brown hair. The quality of this experience was completely different from anything that I had felt with Ivan-this time I had remained fully conscious and release had been gentle and prolonged. I wondered abstractly whether that would qualify as an orgasm, having been trained by

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Wilhelm Reich to think in terms of the graphs in his illegal books, with their clear and well-drawn peaks. I was not yet acquainted with the infinite gradations and subtleties of pleasure. I gave it up, and withdrew into the misty sleepiness and vague music in my head.

At last Robin raised his head and looked at me, full of the light I had longed to turn on in him. "You are a veil," he said, "through which we make love to each other."

I did not ask how or who, I had already read his love for Ivan, and as I drew him up toward me with small urgent movements of my hands, I wondered merely if it was unfulfilled. If they were making it or not. So many questions.

I didn't ask-the game was Cool, remember—but made as if to coax him gently to me, till his eyes were level with mine. We lay for a long time wordless, looking across the pillow at each other, my arm under his neck, my hand fondling his shoulder through the stuff of his shirt. After a while, by some slight sign, some imperceptible change in his breathing, I realized that his own desire was mounting. My free hand found his fly and, looking him lovingly in the eyes, I released his hard cock—smaller than Ivan's, but still the strong developed member of a man. It gave the lie to the angelic, childlike quality of his face and figure. I slid my hand in through the opening in his shorts and felt of his full balls, stroking and smoothing the wrinkled skin gently, and then drawing my fingers over the full length of his prick with the lightest of all possible touches, gentling him as I would a wild creature I wished to tame. Over and over I drew my hand down the length of his cock, as it became longer and began to buck in my grasp.

Robin moaned. His eyes were shut, and his head, thrown back, showed his long, beautiful neck and the slight protuberance of his Adam's apple. I was spent, totally satisfied, and therefore fully in control of the situation. I moved my head deliberately across the pillow and sank my teeth into that white neck just above the collarbone, sucking and tonguing the place I had chosen. OK, I thought, I am vampire and you are my chosen victim, and I will drink your blood till you lie pale and still. Pleasure stirred in me again as I toyed with this fantasy, and my hand continued to fondle his balls. His moan turned into a gasp of anguish and pleasure, and

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just as suddenly as I had begun I withdrew my mouth from his neck and my hand from his cock. I had decided to undress him.

A sound half hiss, half whimper escaped from between his teeth. "Please, don't stop now," he pleaded, and he drew my hand back to his organs. But I pulled away and continued to work on his shirt till I opened it, exposing his white, almost hairless chest—pale, paler than I was, but without the unholy magic of Ivan's sallow flesh. I set my teeth into the flesh of his right breast, just above the nipple, and left a small half-circle of purple tooth marks there, while my fingers undid his belt and tugged at his trousers.

He raised his hips passively, and I drew his pants down over them and left them tangled about his thighs as I went back to stroking and pulling his cock, finally closing my fingers around it and moving my hand faster and faster while his body bucked and trembled. My other arm had by now slipped down around his waist and, as I felt him near a climax, I slipped the middle finger of that hand into his tight, dry asshole. With an exquisite, bewildered child-cry of mingled agony and pleasure, he came. I watched spurt after spurt of the hot, silver gism fall across my stomach and form a web on my pubic hair.

It was some time before his gasping and shuddering had stopped, and we both floated for a while in a haze of satisfaction and peace that was very like napping in the afternoon light.

I was the first to recover. I raised myself on one elbow and looked at him for a long time, toying with the idea of getting up, of more coffee, wondering what the outside world felt like, was it cold or not? The young man lay there with his eyes peacefully shut, his rumpled clothes still clinging to, and concealing, most of him. Suddenly, the aggressiveness I had felt when I thrust my finger into his asshole and felt his hot come on my groin rose in me again. I wanted to set his body trembling under my hands, to play it like an instrument. I was keenly aware of the absurdity of its half-clothed state, which roused me still more.

I slid down in the bed and began to undo his shoes, slipping them off so that they fell softly to the floor. I slipped my fingers under his socks and played with the backs of his ankles-smooth and wondrously thin. I stripped off black nylon socks and took one extraordinarily white foot in my hands, feeling the smooth skin of instep, massaging it lightly with strong fingers before I bent and

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drew my tongue along the ridge of the arch. Robin was not fully awake, and when I reached up to pull off his trousers he did not protest, but helped me by raising himself slightly on the bed. The hair on his legs was fine and calves supple and elongated like a dancer's. I traced their lines with my fingers, following along the hollows they made, raising the soft hair like fur and then smoothing it down again. I felt thoughtful, impersonal, as if I were making love in the abstract.

The past day and night were blurred into one long flesh experience. I felt it had gone on eternally. I was weary, removed, light-headed, but still infinitely curious.

I dropped the trousers on the floor beside the shoes and socks, and turned my attention to removing his shirt. He raised himself slightly and slipped out of it himself, flipping over in bed as he did so, with a gesture half shy, half coy, so that he lay face down, his head buried in the pillow. I knelt on the mattress, sitting back on my heels, and began to play the tips of my fingers over the smooth skin of his back and ass, watching the gooseflesh rise beneath my touch while he lay immobile.

I traced every inch of back and side and flank with a touch as light as butterfly wings, slowly, deliberately. I gradually let my touch get rougher, till I was scraping the pale surface of his body with my fingernails, rousing and irritating every inch of his skin. Robin began to stir with pleasure, raising himself under my hands, purring like a cat. I played a long time with the nape of his neck, alternately smoothing and scratching it. At last I brought my mouth into play, leaving a series of marks down the back of his neck and his spine, then tonguing and licking all of his back. A trail of wetness, like the path of a snail, grew and curved over his skin, already marked with the long red parallel paths of my fingernails.

I passed my lips lightly over his hairless hips, placing the side of one of my hands in the dark crease between his buttocks, as my mouth moved on down over the backs of his thighs and lingered for a long time at the skin at the back of his knees, while a weird sorry tenderness overtook me. He raised his ass against the side of my hand, so that it penetrated more deeply into that dark, hairy crease, and, as I realized where the focus of his pleasure lay, I turned my attention more fully to it, parting the two mounds of his buttocks till I found his small, round asshole.

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All right, I thought, I am certainly not Ivan, but I will give you what pleasure I can. Overcoming a momentary revulsion, I set my mouth over it, licking and reaming the opening, while Robin trembled from head to foot, clutching at the mattress. I raised my head, threw one knee over him so that I straddled his body and, sitting back on his upper thighs which I grasped tightly between my knees, I thrust first one and then two fingers deep into the dark hole, now slick with my saliva. Robin moaned, and, as the second finger entered him, cried out with pain, thrashing from side to side, and bucking his ass up and down wildly. I bent my head down to the small of his back and bit him till I drew blood, tasting the salty liquid again and again, while my right hand plunged up and down in his anus and my left hand raked welts across his shoulders. At last I withdrew, kneeling upright as I straddled him, and drinking in the desperate moans and convulsive trembling that I had set going, aware at last of the turmoil of emotions within myself: desire, aroused by the power I was wielding, and anguish and frustration that I could not complete the act I was approximating, that I was not the man-pirate or jewel thief—I had so often in the daydreams of adolescence pretended to myself to be. Suddenly I was angry at Robin for desiring Ivan, for taking no pleasure in my flesh for its own sake.

I set my hands on his shoulders and turned him over. He resisted momentarily, but I dug my nails into his shoulders and he, limp with uncompleted pleasure and agony, did as I wished. His member was huge and sprang up erect as soon as it was released from its imprisonment. Still kneeling over him, I thrust my fingers deep into my wet cunt, separating the lips and lowering my hole over the dark swollen head of his prick. Smaller than Ivan's, it fitted comfortably into my slightly sore, still tight cunt. I remained thus motionless for a moment, drinking in the pleasure of this comfortable fullness, and then I reached down to play with his balls and find once more his raked and painful asshole. I began to buck slowly up and down, riding him as he turned his head from side to side in pain and pleasure, seeking to bury his face once more in the pillow. My finger, now wet with my own juice, was once again deep in his anus, describing small circles and I could sense the sharp heightening of his pleasure as my fingernail for a moment caught accidentally against the sensitive skin.

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At last my weariness and satiation were overcome and I was fully roused by the helpless anguish and ecstasy of the boy beneath me. My movements became uncontrollable, shaking my whole torso, and unearthly animal sounds burst from my lips as I passed my free hand over his twisted face. For a brief moment I felt that I was drinking his entire being into my cunt as he pumped his life juice into me and I fell forward, face downward, against his chest.

24

April

alternately dallied and dozed, till one of us, roused to desire, fell upon the other with hungry mouth and guided a willing hand home to her cunt.

Or the afternoons, not less frequent, when five or six girls had gathered in one room. One had been chosen and ritually stripped, and the rest, posted at different parts of her anatomy, sought to arouse her while she lay naked on the bed Those long school days spent in studying, though what we studied was not the prescribed curriculum: Tomi playing, for instance, with Kate's feet and ankles, while I nibbled at her small breasts, and Lee, whom we both loved, licked at her belly and finally her cunt—those days formed now a scent and taste about us, leaving the air in a room heavy and charged when we both entered it.

I could feel the electricity flow through my limbs and into my loins as I thought of these things, could feel the aching hunger and slight moistness in my cunt. Tomi sensed what I was feeling, or else my expression changed, for she put down the Conte crayons, set aside her drawing board, and came to me. Our mouths met, I ran my fingers through her short, dark hair, and made as if to lie with her on the wide-planked floor of the studio. But she resisted, shaking her head.

"Martha will see us." Martha was her mother.

"Fuck Martha," I said, not for the first time. "Let's shut the barn door."

"Then she'll know, for sure."

Tomi started to slip away, but I still had her by the waist and drew her to me where I sat, slipping my hand under her white man-tailored blouse and feeling of the charged, mobile flesh of her small back. My face was buried now in her neck and, as I held onto her waist with one hand, I fumbled to open her grey flannel slacks with the other.

"Di Prima, goddammit, don't!"

There was real fright in her voice and I let her go, half-trembling with the smell of her-Chanel's Russian Leather, her habitual cologne—which was to haunt me for the rest of my life.

Tomi stood half a foot away from me, tucking her blouse back into her slacks, straightening her ascot tremulously, all without raising her big green eyes to mine. At last she turned her back on

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me, whipped out a comb, and combed her boyish locks back into place. Then, very slowly and meticulously, she arranged the conte crayons in their box, closed it, picked up a can of fixative, sprayed her drawing and stood it on an easel to dry, while I stood watching her, half angry and half amused.

When at last she turned toward me the flush in her cheeks had subsided, leaving her very pale and very grave. She held out her hand with a smile that begged me not to be angry: "Come on, di Prima, we'll go for a walk in the woods."

The woods began just a few yards beyond the barn, and once in them and out of the sun it was damp, with the damp chilliness of early spring. The ground was soft, the green moss on the tree trunks shone like jewels. I picked my way carefully in my old ballet shoes, trying to avoid really sharp rocks and soggy places. I was wearing a pair of blue jeans pulled over a black leotard and bound about with a royal blue sash. My hair was loose and kept getting caught in the branches and my bare feet in their slippers were chilly.

We forded a stream. That is, Tomi forded it easily enough in her loafers. I, being a city girl, didn't even try: I slipped off my soggy slippers and stepped right into the icy, fast-running water. The stream was quite shallow and not very wide, but when I stepped out my feet and ankles were white as parchment, two of my toes were numb, and the bottoms of my jeans were dripping. The far bank of the stream sloped slightly and we clambered up, slipping and sliding, laughing and pelting each other with leaves and pieces of bark.