World Gone Water (8 page)

I lay awake the night before our reunion. I felt silly for having asked her for a month's worth of silence, and a little surprised and afraid that she'd assented, without so much as a hang-up phone call over those long four weeks. I didn't know any more than I knew a month earlier, and I wondered if Jenny had solved anything. The answer to the latter was quickly apparent as she strode up to me in the deserted Biltmore Fashion Park courtyard, letter in hand, launching into her response to my letter, the bitterness of the response having grown exponentially while it festered for thirty days.

I sat there listening, knowing I deserved every word of it.

The highest emotion one human being can have for another. There is no greater feeling than showing affection and having that affection reciprocated. It's possible to feel different degrees of affection, depending on the nature of one's relationship to another person. Without a doubt, the most gratifying form of affection exists in a realm of physical and sexual freedom. A realm without judgments.

Most people live in a world of constraint, where affection is merely reciprocated, like a game. I do something nice for you, you do something nice for me. While this existence is placating, there is no real emotion, only prescribed emotion.

Free from constraints, however, a person is allowed to indulge in the kind of affection a relationship can create. A person is allowed to give as much affection as he wants; and more importantly, he is allowed to take as much affection as he needs. Each is totally satisfied.

Take Karine, for instance. A good example. Karine had existed for so long on the crumbs of affection various men in her life had thrown at her that when Karine happened into La Onda that night, she looked like she hadn't eaten in days. Even though I didn't know her, I put myself at her mercy. I pretended that I had the utmost affection for her (I'm sure I would've developed a sense of affection
for her, given time) and gave her all the affection I possibly could, replenishing her. It was just that she was so shocked that she didn't know how to react, she wasn't used to the wonderful feeling of unbridled affection. She just couldn't …

Maybe Karine's a bad example.

I arrive to find Jane on the couch, naked, watching TV. I sense she is about to be coy, but then I notice (sigh) Jane has been crying. I sit down next to her, blocking the view, and she pulls her feet up so that her heels are in her crotch.

“What's the matter?” I ask.

“Nothing.” She looks over my shoulder at the TV.

“Tell me what's wrong.” I rub her knees tenderly. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” She sniffs quietly, dramatically.

“Something must be wrong, Jane,” I sigh.

“I can't decide what to do,” she blurts out.

“About what?” I'm massaging her thigh now.

“About anything.” She starts to cry.

“Like what?” I'm beginning to be agitated.

“I just can't decide about … California or here … or you or …” Her voice trails off.

“What do you think you should do?” I ask, genuinely trying to help.

“It's just that I know [
sniff
] that I'll [
sniff
] meet someone like you in California and [
sniff
]—”

“What does
that
mean?” I pull away from her.

“That my life [
sniff
] will be the same … wherever I go.”

“That's probably true,” I say coldly.

“I'm fucked up.” She really starts to sob, but it's just a ploy because she knows she has upset me, and I go for it, putting my arms around her.

“It's okay.” I try to calm her. “You're not fucked up. You're going to be fine.”

“You really think so?” she asks, pressing a wet cheek against my neck.

“Sure.” I pat the back of her head and right then I hate her more than I've hated anyone in a long time. The way she smells makes me crazy and I jump up off the couch.

She looks up. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“No, really, Charlie.” She stands up, fully naked in front of me.

“I just wish you'd make up your mind about us.” I try not to look at her.

“I know. I'm sorry,” Jane says. “I just don't know what I want.”

“Well, you better decide.”

I make myself cry, and this moves Jane to put her arms around me. I struggle out of her grip and stand there with my head down. When I look up at her, fake tears sliding down my face, she's looking away, at the TV.

I like hair. All kinds: brown, black, red, blond, long, short, curly, wavy, straight—whatever. And skin. I can't get the feel of skin out of my dreams.

When other guys were showing their prowess at basketball on the playground at recess, Steven Howfield and I were starting clubs and trying to get girls to join: Saturday Afternoon Club (weekly picnics designed to be romantic, like on TV); Very Secret Society (initiation included kissing both Steven and me on the lips for ten seconds—we promised not to tell anyone, hence the name); Daisy-Chain Gang (the main function of this club was to play out a bizarre game Steven and I had concocted, the rules of which I have forgotten); and the Millionaires' Club (we tried to convince cute girls that we were going to be lawyers and that we'd make a lot of money). Once Erica Ryan and I stayed out on the playground after the bell, hiding in the corner where the gymnasium joined the administration building, and we kissed until Ms. Fisher, our fifth-grade teacher, realized we were missing and came looking for us. Erica and I had to stay after school with our heads down on our desks until her parents and my grandparents came for us. I peeked over my hairless arm several times, but Erica would not look back at me.

And at Erica Ryan's birthday party I was the only boy (Steven Howfield was particularly pissed at being snubbed, but losing out to guys who are better than you is something you can never learn too early in life) and my grandmother was hesitant about letting me go. Imagine what it was like to be the only boy at Erica Ryan's eleventh birthday party. Imagine being locked in a closet full of gloriously dirty laundry and Erica opening the door after counting to sixty and yelling “Here!” Imagine Erica Ryan throwing her older sister's bra at you. Imagine her slamming the door shut again and all the girls giggling. I had never smelled anything more wonderful than that bra. Imagine me pressing the cool fabric against my forehead. Imagine me inhaling.

Years later, in San Diego, I babysat for my divorced piano teacher, Ms. Thomas, who gave lessons out of her house. I was her favorite student. She would sit next to the bench and point along to the music with her slender fingers as I tried to keep up. She smoked a lot, but once you were in her house for a while, you hardly noticed it.

One night I babysat her two kids, Harry, eight, and Sidney, six. I put them to bed at nine, like Ms. Thomas had told me, and I knew she wouldn't be home before midnight, so I had plenty of time to myself. I normally don't like to snoop around because I am impatient and don't know what to look for, but something was clearly drawing me to Ms. Thomas's bedroom.

The dark was cool, and after my eyes adjusted, I could make out a dresser, a bed. The room was a mess, clothes thrown everywhere. I stood motionless, breathing in the peculiar scents the room held.

I moved over to the dresser, opening the top drawer and pulling out one of Ms. Thomas's lace bras. The silk and lace sent an electric charge through me, and without even thinking about it, I unzipped my pants and put the left cup over my erection, letting it hang like a lace flag in a stifled wind.

I'm not sure what made me commit the act. I'm not even sure where the idea came from, except that suddenly I was on my knees at the foot of her bed, and the bra with my cock wrapped inside it was wedged between the mattress and the box spring and I began moving back and forth, like I'd seen in cable movies. It felt awkward at first, a little rough even, but then it smoothed out and felt all right and I was really moving. A couple of times it slipped out and I had to readjust the setup. Right when it started to feel the best, I began to sweat. I moved a little faster and then something went wrong. I wanted to scream. I stopped moving but something was happening and it felt like someone was cutting me with a knife. Finally it stopped and I pulled everything out and felt the hot goo puddled in the left cup. I buried the bra in the rest of the dirty clothes and got out of the room as quietly as I could, shaken and exhilarated.

Jane and I have a game that we sometimes play where I leave and come back.

I cruise around the block while Jane tucks herself into bed, and when I come back, I pull a ski mask over my face and crawl through the front window of her apartment. The place is dark and I feel my way around the living room to the bedroom. The door badly needs to be oiled, but Jane pretends she doesn't hear it squeak.

I leave the door open and pounce on the bed, startling her awake. I press my hand over her mouth and her eyes get wide, a suitably terrified expression comes across her face, and I growl: “I've seen you … I've been watching you.” On some nights Jane works up tears, and the wetness on my fingers really makes me violent. “I'm gonna make you really cry and
you'll love it
.” Jane nods fearfully.

“I'll bet you've got a pretty pussy,” I say, and pull the sheets back. She clamps her knees together and folds them up to her chest, but I slip one hand between them, breaking them apart while unzipping my pants. “Show me your pretty pussy,” I say. “Here, pretty, pretty, pretty.”

I pin her arms to her chest and put all my weight on top of her so Jane can't flail around. I kick out of my pants and boxers. “Shush
now,” I say to quiet her sobbing, and I pretend that if she's quiet, I'll pull my hand back. At this point she begins to whimper and this is usually when I enter her. “Oh, yeeeeees,” I moan. “You have a pret-ty pus-sy, pret-ty pus-sy,” I sing as I hump to the rhythm my words are making.

After I come, I pull out and roll off her. Jane gasps for air. We both grab for each other's hand. We lie still for a moment, not saying anything, and then Jane mounts me until she comes too.

The week Tim was suspended for starting fires in the boys' bathroom, my reputation was revealed to me. Principal Edwards had summoned us for interrogation simultaneously, and everyone was shocked to see me return to my seat so soon. I imagined the others regarded me with an air of caution, wondering what I would do to retaliate against those who had nominated me to the principal's ears. I dreamed of radical terrorism, toilets spouting like fountains, poison ivy on the swing set, ink in the lunch milk, the entire playground on fire. Transferring schools seemed bad enough, but transferring from Rapid City to San Diego in the middle of my freshman year was socially disastrous. Not picked for basketball or football or baseball, Tim was the only other kid no one wanted anything to do with. “Those guys are a bunch of fags, anyway,” Tim said. “Humping each other over a little ball. Fuck 'em.”

Tim and I spent most of the time hanging out after school at Tim's hideout, a tin construction shack left by the crew who had paved the highway behind my new home. We called it the clubhouse. It could hold up to five people, but only Tim and I ever went there. Weeds sprouted up inside the shack, nourished by the shaft of
sunlight the doorless entrance allowed. We collected cans there, rummaged from the Holiday Inn Dumpster down the highway, and cashed them in at the local recycling center. Weekends were our big score. In addition to the cluster of beer cans, we usually came away with a full library of porno magazines discarded by weekend surfers. When the bell rang at the end of the school day, Tim and I raced to the clubhouse and spent the afternoon leafing through the fleshy pages.

Tim learned the delivery schedule at the Texaco next to the Holiday Inn and knew that when a truckload of goods came in, one of the clerks would have to leave a register to check them in. The other clerk was usually overwhelmed with cars pulling in off the freeway.

So we started stealing beer.

First it was six-packs behind our back. Then we started walking out with a twelve-pack each. Olympia. Hamm's. Pabst Blue Ribbon. I selected mine more on the basis of color and design, but Tim always stole Coors.

“My dad drinks Coors,” he told me. Tim's father left his mother when Tim was five. Tim never talked about him, except he always told me that his father drank Coors. I wondered if it was the only thing Tim knew about him. A small picture on the hutch in Tim's apartment showed the three of them. Tim was in his mother's thin arms. His father had his arm around his mother. They both had long, thin faces with eyes the size of marbles, and their hair was identically feathered in the style of the times. I never told Tim that my parents died in a gas explosion before I could really know anything about them, back when I lived in Sacramento. That was before I was shipped from relative to relative, first Denver and then Santa Fe and then Rapid City.

We added our empties to the aluminum heaps outside the shack.

“Look at this,” I said, fishing a used rubber out of an Old Milwaukee can. The tip was full and it was tied off in the middle.

“Gross,” Tim said, coming closer. He knocked it out of my hand and stepped on it. The white fluid leaked into the dirt. “Have you ever used one?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“I have,” he said. “On my neighbor.”

I looked at him skeptically.

“Really. You can too, if you want. She's about forty,” he said. “She's a mental defect, though. She sits on the curb and drools on herself all day.”

We really did find Dora on the curb, just like Tim said. I'd seen her before but thought she was just waiting for a friend, or the bus.