Robin and Ruby (24 page)

“I’m too skinny,” he says. “I can’t put on bulk.”

“No,” she protests, though she is almost alarmed by how lean he is. His torso is a plank, stripped of any excess, skin stretched over striated muscle, bone, sinew. There’s nothing to pinch. The veins stand out in his arms. He’s probably always been this thin, but when she met him on their Catholic weekend she wasn’t thinking about his body. Now she can’t take her eyes off him—the concave chest with its two dark nipples, the scraggly dark hairs above his navel, the slanting lines of his lower abdomen, moving from his bony hips down into the waist of his jeans. She hasn’t seen a lot of naked men. Calvin, of course. Her brother, careless around the apartment. Her friend Tara’s boyfriend, who streaked through a slumber party, his thing sticking out stiffly. Men’s bodies are so strange, there’s almost nothing soft or warm-blooded about the way they look. They are more like machines than like mammals. Their bones seem like
parts.

She stands and then pulls him to his feet, too. She unfastens the button at his waist. She tugs downward. He is wearing navy blue boxer shorts, crumpled up inside his pants. He pushes the jeans down, and the boxers loosen around his thighs. She can see how his penis is thickening, nudging the cotton cloth away from his leg.

This is where Calvin would grab her hand, press it against him, and start the rubbing that he himself would eventually finish off. This is where she would begin to count each stroke, rhythmically, as a way to pass the time. But Chris has kept his hands at his side, letting her lead. She turns around so he can unfasten her bra. It slides off. She turns back to face him. He’s still smiling. He’s harder than before.

“I’ve always had to do all the work,” he says. “With girls. Like, be the one to…”

She pulls his hands to her waist. He unbuttons the jeans she’s wearing, his jeans, and then she’s in her panties, and she takes him by the hand and leads him to the bathroom. Just to walk across a room half naked—it’s not something she’s done before. The only sound is the rain on the glass, coming down hard, as if someone outside is clattering an electric typewriter, writing down their story as it happens.

In the bathroom mirror she glimpses the bruise darkening on her hip, the spot where she hit the floor during the scuffle. It’s a dark smudge in the bright room, with its white tiles and pastel towels, its smells of cleanser and soap.

They stand outside the tub while he adjusts the knobs and giggle as the room fills with thick vapor. It nearly obscures them from each other. And then she doesn’t know who’s doing what first but they’re both out of their underwear and kissing, arms wrapped around each other. She’s no longer worried about moving fast. He lifts her up. His grip all sinew and sharp angles. He places her in the tub. Catches her when she nearly slips. Water cascades over them, still hot but bearable, except on her stomach, where it’s like fire on the sunburn. She turns away from the jets. Now he’s behind her, pressing hard into the small of her back. She reaches back—for a split second she thinks that she’s grabbed his wrist. He’s so thick. He’s bone-hard. She slides her hand and finds the head, that rubbery dome. Who was it who said—
Benjamin
, that’s right, Benjamin had said to her that Chris was small. Which is clearly untrue. Why do guys all care so much about their size? Why are they so competitive?
Phallocentrism,
that’s what her women’s studies professor calls it.

Chris’s hands are wrapped around her, soaping her breasts, her nipples have never felt so hard, his hand moves down to her stomach, cool on the burn, and then down some more into the tangle of hair. The soap moves around. She can feel him being tentative so she puts her hand on his and lets him know to push, to clean her, she wants to be clean there, for him.

He turns her around and lets her rinse off and then, awkward, drops down to his knees and digs in with his fingers to find the lips of her vagina. She puts her hands in his hair, clamps on to him for balance. His mouth goes into the mossiness. She widens her stance, anticipating already what she hasn’t ever experienced. This is not something that Calvin or anyone has done to her. A mouth on her
clint.
She’s touched herself and knows what can happen, and it’s like that at first, his tongue like a finger but slippery. She finds a way to brace the wall so she can lodge herself onto the force of his tongue.

“Lower,” she dares to say, and then guides him with “yes, there” and “no, lower,” figuring this out as best she can. Not like a finger at all, his tongue sets her trembling and arching her back. She worries she might fall. Pushes him away and nudges back to the lip of the tub. She yanks the shower curtain out of the way, the water will get everywhere, so what? Chris hasn’t stopped eating her out—that’s what this is,
eating out.
She feels a laugh welling up. Such a vulgar phrase,
eating out,
but now she’s part of it.
He’s eating me out.
It seems comical, joyous. She needs to find her balance. She grabs him by the hair, pulls him off, slides backward out of the tub—a wobbly maneuver onto the bathmat. She lays herself down. She hopes the mat is clean. She doesn’t care.

Chris has crawled out of the tub after her, a diver coming up from the depths to gasp for air before plunging in again. He knows how to do this,
God, he really does, thank you, thank you.
Is that OK, to thank God for sex? Shivers and shivers, it’s getting more intense,
God,
there’s pine in the air mown grass blossoms sap the stickiness of leaves she’s humming moaning into the wind blowing down the side of a mountain she could topple right off into the sky down and down through the air.
What is this what is happening.
Like hitting the surface of water knifing through it like velvet breathing underwater no difference between what is inside of her and what is beyond her mouth open taking in the ocean letting out a scream,
let it out
, letting him letting him letting him—

Her body, trembling.

She’s being lifted, somehow he’s picked her up, and he’s carrying her to the bed, again, the second time tonight. She’s in the air wet and naked. What were all those pictures, flying and mountains and water and velvet? Chris’s wet black hair is stuck to his skin, his brown eyes are bare and open and zoomed in on her. Has anyone ever looked at her before like this? He says something, he’s asking her—what, she can’t hear anything but the running water of the shower or is that rain outside? She can’t help it, her hand goes where his mouth was. She’s wet not just with shower water but with what came from inside, her orgasm.
I had an orgasm, that’s what that was.
And the laugh that welled up before now breaks like a wave, and she can’t stop.

“Why are you—?”

“That felt so—”

He’s pushing her legs open. She reaches out to hold on to him, there’s not much of a butt to grab, skin and bones, a tiny tuft of hair at the top of his tailbone. Up front, pushing forward, is the thick shaft, the pliant head, hovering right there, where he’s licked and licked. Filling her. Wait, is he going in? There’s pressure, a radius of heat, sliding in. “Wait,” she says, “wait, wait, wait, wait,” she says. “Wait, get the rubber,” she says and shoves him off her and slides away. “Don’t just—”

“Sorry. Right. Of course. You’re not on the pill.”

“No—why would I?”

“I know. I’m just used to—” Then he’s gone, fumbling through his clothes.
Used to?
What is he used to? Having sex with girls on the pill? How many girls has he had sex with? What about the kind of germs the pill can’t stop?…He’s back, he’s fumbling with the foil, which says
TROJENZ
—she always thought it was
TROJANS
—wait, it’s
TROJAN-ENZ
, what does that mean? Maybe this is some new kind. He puts it over his dick, gets it wrong, has to flip it, now it unfolds along the shaft but does not go on easily. “I’m having trouble with this,” he fumbles. “It’s too tight.”

She sits up. “Should I help?”

“I hate these things,” he says, and then with a frustrated growl, he pulls the rubber off, tosses it to the floor. He throws his legs over the side of the bed and drops his head in his hands. He pouts.

She pushes her hair back from her face, tilts her neck so the hair will stay out of the way. She sees that his cock, softening suddenly, has no foreskin, which is what she’s used to, with Calvin. She lowers her mouth, puts her lips around the head of it. There’s a taste from the latex—gross, medicinal—but she keeps at it, moves her wet tongue around, and the taste goes away under the wetness and the heat. She tries to figure out how to breathe.

She doesn’t really know what to do here. She’s done this with Calvin but not much, she never really liked it with the foreskin. She wants to make Chris feel as good as he made her feel, but really what do you do with it? It’s strange, a big piece of person in your mouth, a piece of the guy machine. A big machine part. He pushes into her throat. She gags. The shock of it. “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry,” he says.

She hears the foil crinkling. He’s opening another one.

“Try again?” he says, sliding hard from her mouth and fumbling again with the rubber. She lies next to him. “I want your first time to be special.”

But she remembers the first time—the secret first time, Brandon, no condom, no gentle anything. The blood that time. It scared her enough to send her to her mother, a day or two later. Dorothy took her to the doctor, she meant well, she was concerned, but it was awful, the doctor touching her with hands that had hair on them. Opening her up and saying in his stern voice
you’re lucky this time, your carelessness could leave you pregnant or diseased or both, don’t you know what’s going around out there, think about that, young lady.

They kiss, and it feels different this time, not a sweet bloom but something raw and exposed, mouths chapped and burning as if cooked in the sun. The smells and tastes are different now. There’s soap on his lips from eating her out, and there’s something else there, too, which is, she guesses, her own smell. Weird to think about that. She feels in an instant daring and adult. She sees that together they could do everything, things she’s only heard about and never imagined for herself. She lays back. He’s got the rubber on. He gets in between her legs. She’s still wet, so it goes in quickly, sliding into her inflamed vagina. She’s heard of women using lubricants but never understood until now the way her body would create its own. He’s moving against her. She feels pressure in every direction, forcing the breath from her lungs.

“Go slowly,” she says.

“Are you OK?” He holds himself above her. She touches his skin. Nods. His skin is smooth and hot, like the door of an oven.

“Can I push a little more?” he says. “I might be about to break the—I mean, you’ll probably feel—It could hurt.”

Break the. Probably feel. Could hurt.

It did hurt, back then. She did feel it. The broken hymen. The doctor used that word later. She had swallowed her scream, back then.

“I’m afraid,” she says, or perhaps only thinks. He doesn’t seem to hear her. He pushes. She feels herself resisting, tries to relax. A deep breath, a flutter in her throat as she exhales. His hip bones press against. He is deep inside. He’s shining with sweat. A switch seems to have flipped, opening something up in him. Droplets hang and release onto her. His effort is clear. That’s good, she should feel to him like a virgin. “Just push,” she says, and he does, deep, and she lets herself cry out. He looks worried when she does this, so she grabs him and holds him close.

They rock together. She shuts her eyes.

A whimpering. She looks at him. His lower eyelids pool with tears.

“Chris?”

“I thought I was going to die, but now I feel strong again.”

She kisses him. Then it all disappears, time disappears, and thought, and worry, and only sensation is left, and it sort of feels great and sort of hurts, but mostly what she does is look at his face, which is concentrated and beautiful, the sad eyes, the scar on his lip, the tendons in his neck, the black hair flopping like a curtain in the wind, a bead of sweat along his cheekbone. He’s pulling back, and then digging deeper and really going for it, he’s lifted her legs with his hands and is just going for it.

And then at some point the balance goes the other way, and things aren’t so good. Despite the natural lubrication, there’s an irritated feeling, too. Some excess friction. “Slower,” she croaks out.

“Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.” He leans in and kisses her.

“You don’t have to apologize,” she says.

He says, “Let me pull out,” and he does. Then he says, “Oh, no.”

“What?”

She sees his penis pointing up to his navel, pulsating, oozing clear gooey liquid. But there’s no latex on it.

She’s confused. “I thought you put it on—”

“I did. You saw it.”

He’s patting the bed around her. She lowers her legs, scoots backward.

He says, “Is it in you?”

“What?” She reaches down, it almost hurts to touch herself, she’s so inflamed, but her fingers slip in past the hair and lips. Then she feels the curled edge. She pulls it out, a dun colored wrinkled slimy thing. She winces.

“Oh, fuck,” he says. “I think that can happen if, I don’t know, I heard it can happen, if it doesn’t fit right.” He’s stammering through accelerated breath. “Do you want, I don’t know, a towel or anything?”

She looks at her fingers. She never took off the ring he gave her. She says, “Let me go wipe up the blood.”

“Is there?” he says, examining under the head. The clear goo dribbles down the length of the shaft. Could she get pregnant from that?

In the bathroom she runs the water, wipes herself with a warm cloth. There’s no blood. She hates that she’s lying. She doesn’t know what else to do.

She sits on the toilet, she thinks she should pee, that if there were any sperm that got in she could pee them out. This is absurd, she knows, but she imagines it’s true anyway. The urine tingles as it passes through.