—Yeah. But you’re with her? How is that?
We’ve hung out a thousand times but always in a pack. I know maybe two things about Rob—he plays football, and last year punched some guy’s arm, I don’t remember the rest. I try to make up a way to talk to him. —The best fuck.
He grimaces and keeps walking. —Dude. I just meant, is she nice.
—It’s one thing to write love poems. Another, though, to deal with that river-god of the blood: hidden, guilty. Even the girl, who thinks she knows her young lover, even she isn’t close enough for him to tell how this lord of lust, in the lonely times before she knew him, before she eased him, almost before she seemed possible, would lift up his godhead …
I wasn’t laughing but now I am, just a little. —Sorry.
She smiles but she is almost, actually, sad about it. —I know. Still ridiculous.
—It wasn’t, until that word.
—Yeah, but do you know what it is? Godhead?
I squint my eyes to last year’s Lit class. I was hardly there then, what with Amelie when her mom went away for ten days. —Godhead. Isn’t it— but then I’m shrieking. She’s grabbing my cock, almost joysticky, and waving it around.
—wet with the utterly unknown, and churn the night—
—Ouch ouch ouch!
—to an endless riot! Ha!
Alec’s wide lonely eyes actually turn my stomach one day in the hall. —We haven’t hung out in a while.
—We hang out all day every day all school day long.
—Maybe this weekend you want to,
—She and I will probably go to Luka’s party.
—She and I.
—Alec, she’s my girlfriend.
But he’s just looking at me. —Alec.
—I guess I thought …
But he doesn’t finish it. I have to tell him, so what I say is, —But I told you, we weren’t.
I looked on the computer and there’s a scale for it, gay to straight and you can be anywhere on it. I’m on it at the part of, if there’s no girl why not, and now there is, so let’s stop and be cool about it.
He’s at, obviously, some other part.
And the person I would talk about it to, this Alec situation or mess or nothing, would be Alec. My hand hovers on the screen. Grisaille doesn’t answer, so now I don’t have to decide whether or not to talk about it with Grisaille, I scroll through my others, almost laughable how I will never tell any of them any of this.
Even the girl who thinks she knows her young lover, even she isn’t close enough for him to tell—
Let’s watch something. Hello, look at this girl bent over the table. Four years ago I think, I thought anal sex just meant you were really particular about it.
She calls in the morning. —Run over here.
—I have the car though.
—But I want you sweaty, Cole. Record-break the two-mile, that run.
—Get on top of me.
—No, no, Cole. Keep like this. Keep moving. Yes.
—But I want—
—Don’t care what you want, keep moving, yes, yes, yes, yes, fuck, yes, yes.
—I want to watch us in the mirror, Cole, but I need my glasses.
The Venn diagram of adorable and fuckable, in the mirror with glasses on and nothing else, her legs up against my chest, grinning until I push deeper and she has to close her eyes.
—Stop covering it up. It’s cutest now.
—Now?
—It’s cute. Like a little slug when it’s done. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hot when it’s big. But your little resting cock, so cute. Adorable godhead.
—Still ridiculous, that word.
—Well, you can’t put penis in a poem, right? Also ridiculous. Cock? Oh, you’re ruining it.
—You’re ruining it. It’s your talk that did it.
—So much for cute.
—But it’s hot now?
—Yes. Getting there.
I press in deeper. It’s further but it’s not closer. Not the latex, just the separateness, some other distance I can’t slide across. Grisaille feels the same, I can tell, her legs urging me on. But we can’t, we need to, get closer than this, can we? Can we? Is there a trick to it, a technique that will make this as wild and together as I know we are feeling? Is there? I am almost crying at how far away from it we are finding ourselves, on this trembling actual bed.
She got up and went to the bathroom and came back wearing only my shirt. I was on my back on the bed. She stopped at the edge of the bed and clutched my hair a little. Then she moved so she was on my mouth and just rubbed there. Her moans were so unpretty I knew it was real. She tasted like everything, like a girl, like a person, like a creature. Midway I tried to reach for her and she said no and like this came on my mouth like I wasn’t even there and I, so much, loved it.
I would like to excuse my son Cole from school this morning. I could see at breakfast that he had spent Sunday afternoon fucking and fucking and needs to spend today thinking about it and masturbating and recuperating.
We kiss hard in the vitamin aisle and then there’s an old man scowling at us. Leave us alone. This is, have you seen her body, what we’re for, to be messing around if we want to.
And every time she walks up to me it’s another motorcycle ride.
—Wait, you’re,
—What?
—Your arm, if you could,
—You’re acting like I’m in the way, Cole. Like I’m smack dab in the middle of your path— —Well,
—of fucking me, Cole. Me. Hello.
—OK. Put your arm anyplace you want then.
And I’m shrieking out of the bed while she howls with giggles.
—Not there!
—You said anyplace!
I flunked a test, a big one. Rain makes me cranky anyway, angry even. Alec acted like a dick all day. I know my mom’s going to give me shit. I am telling Grisaille these things lying on her floor, for her to get down from the bed and make me feel better. Days like today, I am telling her how much I really need to come.
When I come on her belly she lounges and dips one finger in, moves around like a skater. We name the babies that have not happened. Mildred. Helga. Skippy. Nobody we’ll ever know.
—Would you pose for me?
—Like naked? No way, Cole.
—But I’m looking at you naked now.
—One, I have a sock on. And for two, you couldn’t draw me. You’d just pounce on me in five minutes.
—No I wouldn’t.
—Yes you would, look. You’re hard talking about it.
The word pounce, that was hot.
I am playing with her hair. Of all the girls, hers is my world’s favorite to play with.
—Out of all the girls—
—Ssh, ssh, don’t say anything, don’t spoil it.
—I was just always looking for you.
She sighs a little. She puts a shirt on. She’s right, I wrecked it.
—We can’t do it standing up if we’re not the same height, Cole. Not really.
I stop and need to process how offhand she is, knowing this. Some experience in Germany, up against a wall with some other boy. Kind of hot, kind of sickening. She looks at me and misreads it.
—Cole, you know I’m taller, right? A little taller. Other fucks. Better fucks than me.
—So you pose for me, Cole.
I’m already up. —OK.
—Let me get my sketchbook. This pen sucks. OK, put your arm up.
—What? Why?
—Because it changes your belly, see?