She sits up in bed. "You pinned me down."
"Did you like it a little?"
She sighs. "I don't know. Maybe. Maybe we shouldn't have stopped using condoms."
I try not to say it, but it comes out anyway. "I don't know if I can ever go back to using them."
Anna turns on the light. "What?"
"I mean, of course I can, but . . . this feels so alive."
She gets up to go to the bathroom. "We are so going to get pregnant. Jesus Christ."
My generation, we're addicted to safety. We came up in the first wave of safe sex. At thirteen, I saw so many commercials about HIV that death and sex seemed like the same thing, guaranteed in the same instant you yielded to what felt good. And growing up in a tough part of town, lots of folks have little kids early. My uncle, my older brother, my younger brother. Those guys are stuck, man, they can never leave the Heights — which at seventeen, from the outside, looks like the same fate as getting sick.
When Magic said he had AIDS, we all talked about it after scrimmage; of course he did. If I played for the Lakers . . . well, sure. It was like tempting the gods if you were famous. And if you were ordinary, like us, you might escape a thunderbolt or two, but not for long. We were all going to get HIV, it was a matter of time. It was everywhere, AIDS was all we heard about — even if I'd only known one person who actually died, and he was one of the priests who taught at the high school.
My father sat me down once, at the end of our big and only sex chat, and told me even good girls get diseases. He even managed to look sad when he said it. That's a hard image to shake when you're sixteen and going down on Cindy, who is definitely not a good girl.
And that's the thing. How do you stop being excited by risk once you've tasted it? Condoms dull, they blunt. It's not that you don't feel anything; it's that you know what you're not feeling. What couple hasn't teased around the edge, the lips, imagined what it would be to fuck and avoid consequence? Your body knows it deep down, it's all tones and shades of slippery, it's subtle and darkly wet instead of a straightforward path, you swallowing him up, all the rounded slick turns, the thousand places where she squeezes you and he strokes up along her and your bodies fit together as if they were always meant to.
Except there's no way to avoid consequence for long. The thunderbolt, it's coming.
The next day at work, Tuesday and I get lunch at Taco Lita around the corner. The table's outside, a feeble ring of tiles on a slab smeared with hot sauce. I tell her about the previous night, and she laughs.
"Why's she freaking out? Don't your girl know about pheromones?"
"What?" I'm busy flicking lettuce into the parking lot.
"She's ovulating, right?"
"Well, yeah. That's the problem."
"And you gotta have her. There you go. Simple."
"Right. Like all Mexicans got to have lots of kids." I rub my eyes. "Really fucking enlightened."
"We're animals, Blanco Paco. White, brown, whatever, goes past reason. Chemicals coming from her pores make you want to have a baby."
Fat Tuesday leans forward across the table, and in order to look away from her cleavage, I get a clear shot straight down the back of her shirt. She's a rippling aquarium drenched with color. Tuesday grins. "Women got some serious power in their sweat."
"Sometimes I think I'm not even her type," I say. "You know? She needs a professor or a blue-eyed banker or . . . something."
She kisses me long and deep. I don't know where she is. |
"Listen to me, BP. Listen. You both are trying like hell to make a baby. Doesn't matter what you think she wants. You're being what you need to be. So's she."
Tuesday grabs my taco and shakes her head. "Just own it, you fuckin' pussy."
It's been a week since we've seen each other. Anna invites me over for dinner. I, of course, bring flowers, because if she's already pregnant, at least she can tell our son I brought her lilies when she told me.
When I get there, the lights are out. The back door's open, so after knocking I walk in and lock it behind me. She's in the bedroom, wearing a robe. Anna laughs nervously and points to one of her chairs from the kitchen.
"Sit, wolf." I do.
She pulls my arms behind my back, then binds my left wrist to my right with rope. Where did she get rope, I think, and how did she learn how to tie knots like that? She grins and produces a black kerchief, blindfolding me firmly. And then she kisses me long and deep. I don't know where she is.
I feel her before I understand what I'm touching: the fingers tied behind me slide along the edge of warm, wet folds. My belt buckle goes, my pants are undone, yanked around my ankles and left there. "My shoes are still on, m'ija." There's no reply, and in truth, I'm throbbing.
And then all of my senses focus on the proximity of Anna, inches away from my chest, my mouth — her hair, her skin, her sweat, her legs straddling my legs, and she teases me in slow strokes with her hand. The juice of her dripping down, coating her fingers as they grip slippery and push slowly, achingly down over the head of la riata. I can feel the heat of her pussy not even an inch over me, and as my hips arch up to reach her she uses two wet hands to encircle, stroke, hold me down by the shaft. I know this without sight, I know where she must be as I thrust up toward her, but every time I'm held tightly with a squeeze and kept at bay. I can't see her, but I know her. Anna's long throat, Anna's caramel eyes, Anna's favorite way to walk to work. Anna's fears of dying alone. The roughness of her knuckles, the abandon with which she loves her job, the way she was gracious and funny when my mother burned dinner when they met a month ago and Mamá trying not to cry. The way she looks at me before we fall asleep: not possessive, not wary, not distant. No barriers, so safe space. Just her looking into me.
She takes off my blindfold and she says, "I want to see your eyes," as she lowers herself onto me. We start to sway, both of us, in long slow strokes, and I feel Anna filling every part of me.
"Should I stop?" she breathes. "Do you want me to stop?"
And for an instant, Fat Tuesday flashes through my head, the magnificently frank abundance of her back, and as I start to get closer and closer, the light goes golden, all brilliant gold, golden scales rimmed with amber.
"I want you," I say. And I do. n°
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XXL by Craig Davidson |
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| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
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Ryan Sloan grew up in Los Angeles and teaches writing in the Bay Area.
A recent graduate of New York University's MFA program, Ryan's work
has appeared in L.A. Weekly, Opium Magazine, The Modern Spectator, Locus
Novus, Poor Mojo's Almanack and Painted Bride Quarterly. He's at
work on his first novel, The Daily Jake. For more, go to
sloanerisms.blogspot.com.
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©2007 Ryan Sloan and Nerve.com. |
