Coming Together: With Pride (22 page)

"Look," my friend beside me says. "Here she comes. That girl."

I am curious and look closer. I have met girls like this before, but have not been interested. Still, I have always enjoyed curiosity and pleasure. She could provide either. And I am drunk; this usually means I must fuck something, or at the very least pursue pleasure until I pass out, even if it is a small pleasure, like braiding my own hair.

If I am on drugs, they are mild. I am mildly interested in her. The girl approaches. She leans in, tousling her own curly brown hair. "Hello," she says. "How are you? What's your name?" I notice she is pretty in her way. She is not coy or withdrawn.

"Hello," I say back. I tell her my name.

As she speaks, she touches me, plays with my straight red hair, and leans in close; she then lets her fingers linger on my shoulders, her eyes on my breasts. I flush and am flattered. "I've been watching you," she says.

"You have?" I ask, out of the corner of my eye still watching my Italian man with long black hair seduce someone else, a brand new sprightly blond, not my tall friend, who stands alone although her ankles are also showing. From this unhappy eye corner, I am also watching him kiss her in a minute, knowing he will fuck her, too, in another half hour, and my eyes are burning—which I blame on the smoke of the campfire.

"Come away with me," this girl who likes me says, getting my attention more fully by trailing one fingertip over my cleavage.

"Where?" I ask.

"To the restroom," she says. "I don't want to go alone."

 "Oh, okay," I say.

 The drums are loud as we walk past them and out from that clearing. The air is tribal. I walk with her past the fire pit and into the dark night. We have no flashlight. We stumble along. I wonder if Tommy, the Italian, has succeeded with second base. I wonder if the new girl is a slut and will buy into his, "I'm sterile" routine and let him not use a condom like I didn't let him do. "Shh," the girl who likes and walks with me says, turning towards me.

"I was not speaking," I tell her, realizing too late that my tankard is gone and I have no idea where I left it.

She kisses my cheek and presses her finger to my lips. She and I are the same height. Her eyes are hazel. We are alone. She kisses my lips. And then, "I want to kiss you," she says. "Again."

I nod. She leans in. I have no idea what I'm doing—since kissing is fine, but the whole rest of what comes next confuses me. Her tongue moves in my mouth. Her hands pull my body closer. We kiss for what feels like a long, long time. I feel wet. I feel she is my mirror. I am interested in this. Am I, by kissing her, kissing myself? This seems a new sort of masturbation. I am interested.

Perhaps, I will lift her skirt and put my finger in her cunt just to see if I gasp in doing so, if I feel my own movement. The taste of her lips is soft and earthy, like mead. Her hips are soft and earthy like loam. I want to press her body to my body just to see if I like it and how much. When I do, I do like it—and a lot.

We are all touch hungry, are we not? I have enjoyed kissing her. I am erotic and unbound and she touches me well. The sound of the drums is faint in the distance, but they are still playing strong in my veins.

I do not know if I am on drugs this night, this evening I am remembering, but this girl then puts her hot breath on the top of my breasts. She kisses me there, too, her lips wet and moving quickly up my neck as if it were a flute. If I am not on drugs, I feel as if I am. She clutches my ass and grinds her pelvis into mine. I stand in the woods, kissing a girl, two girls with our dickless fronts grinding against each other.

It is dark. I don't know what to do next, but she is the aggressor. My head spins. "I want you," she says. "Come to my tent after I use the restroom. Wait for me outside." She goes into a porta-potty to relieve herself. I wait. She comes back out, smiling at me.

The night air blows coolly across my corseted breasts, which are sensitive where she has touched them and coldest where she wet them with saliva. "My tent," she says, nibbling my ear. "Now."

I am curious, but I am scared.

I am also afraid my friends are talking shit about me. "She asked me to go with her to the bathroom," is what I could say, if I go back now. "And shut the hell up."

This is a well known girl's code fact that you never should let another girl walk into the woods alone, let alone to go into a public space like a restroom where a rape could happen in a bathroom stall. I should leave right away, I think.

If I don't go now, I have no idea what I'd tell them. These girls, these friends of mine are new. Perhaps they will think I am gay and talk about me. Perhaps they will be disgusted.

I stand still, unsure of what to do. The girl I stand before lifts my skirt with her hand, sliding it up from my ankle to my thigh. She pushes me back into the rough bark of a tree. The air is cold and soft. The bark is rough and hard. Her hand flirts with my satin panties and rubs me through them. She slides a finger under them and into my wetness and my crotch. She lets that finger slide, and I gasp. She is good at what she does. "My tent," she says, bringing her finger to her lips to suck on. "Let's get there. I want to taste you."

If I was sleeping before, uncertain what to do, I awaken. I am drunk and unsure and unwilling to be a target for more gossip again just for an orgasm or two. I am soft and tender inside, already hurt before the slander even starts.

"I can't," I say, "I've got to go. I've got to go now."

 I remember she clutches my hand. "I'm sorry," she says. "We can go more slowly. Wait."

"No," I say. I run through the woods, my skirts flowing behind me. I catch up with my friends. They grill me. "We went to the bathroom," I say. "That's all." They titter and continue to ask, but finally drop it when they can tell I am angry enough to start hitting them. I am relieved when they do. The next morning she comes looking for me. I avoid her. Sober. Uncomfortable. The sun is blinding on my hangover.

Half a hit of acid, maybe? Maybe not. I'm not sure. The girl is the main thing I remember, her way, how she almost seduced me.

Later, I will remember her well and think that leaving her that night was a mistake. I will feel like an ass to have been so cold in the next-day daylight. Later, too, I will wonder what was there in her tent that might have changed my path and eliminated a few bad memories or actualities of the subsequent asshole boyfriends.

And much later, when I have learned how to be a real woman, I will dip my head low to taste my first female lover, when I first go to do this, and I will think of that girl I never slept with, never made love to—apologizing to her and tasting in the collective cunt of womanhood, in a new woman I will treat far better, all that first girl's best and earthy things.

©

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Raven

James Buchanan

Marten stared through the greasy haze filming over the diner's window. Leaden skies backed a town sulking under the weight of yet another dry winter. Twin strips of concrete bordered an empty asphalt river. Across the way, hunched against the chill wind,
that guy
stood…again. Every time Marten looked up from bussing tables, there
man-in-black
was, hovering at the edge of his vision. Marten had no idea who or what the guy waited for.

The guy's name was Raven. That much Marten did know. He'd never met him, but the town gossip wasn't pretty: trouble maker, thief, and lazy. All the things Marten didn't want said about him.

His hands stuffed into the pockets of black jeans, Raven bounced from foot to foot like he had to keep moving to stay warm. Razor-sheared blue-black hair fluttered about his face, and the tail of his black trench coat flapped around his thighs. Black jeans, black t-shirt, black boots, and black hair: a monochrome jackdaw staring with bright, jet eyes.

The stare devoured Marten, wormed into his brain, and whispered about a lot more than just staring. He felt the attention across his back and thighs and prickling along his scalp. He grabbed the lip of the buss-tub and swallowed. He didn't want to look back. He didn't want to see that dark, windswept guy and get caught in those eyes.

Dark thoughts spread like wings across Marten's mind. In the back of his brain, a tiny voice jeered:
I want you…naked.
So soft, he barely heard it, and yet the words echoed loudly through his soul. He didn't hear it. He couldn't have heard it. Raven was out there on the other side of the street. Marten was inside smelling old fry grease and musty heating coils.

Naw, you heard it.
The seductive sound trickled into the bones behind his ears. Masking his intentions by grabbing plates and coffee mugs off the table, Marten shifted his gaze, so he could look without looking. For a moment he panicked, the figure he sought wasn't there. His breath came back when Raven stepped into his limited field of vision. As if he knew, the dark man's lip twitched with a barely suppressed smirk.

Trying to drive out the thoughts, Marten swept his wrist across his forehead, hard enough to burn some. He shuddered. After a deep breath, he grabbed the tub and headed toward the kitchen with a load of dirty dishes. Distracting flights of fancy needed to wait. Marten needed this job.

"Daydreaming out there?" Avie's high-pitched squeak caught him as he rounded the counter.

Marten jerked up short at her rebuke. "Ah, not really," he stammered, "just some crud stuck on the table."

Pushing her half-glasses up her sharp nose, Avie stared with her pinched little black eyes. She smoothed the wrinkles down the front of her khaki dress before responding. "You were daydreaming. Always got your head in the clouds." Washed out brown hair puffed about her face; a victim of the steam in the kitchen. "Stop it. You got work to do. Dishes don't wash themselves."

"Yes, ma'am." Marten hauled the tub to the sink. He scraped the filth off the plates into the trash then tossed each dish onto the counter. Lukewarm, soapy water already filled the basin, and a thin film of grease coated the surface. With a groan, Marten rolled up his sleeves and began scrubbing plates.

You deserve better, you know?

That he had to agree with. Why couldn't Avie invest in an actual dishwasher? Not that they had that much business. It was cheaper to pay Marten to clean up after the spattering of regulars they got each day than shell out big bucks for a system. When the lot was washed and racked for drying, Marten grabbed a towel to dry his hands.

"Marten!" Avie squealed from the front.

What now? He pulled a meager pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and absently answered, "Yeah?"

"We got chocolate pie back there?"

Something better than pie back there?

Marten shook off the whisper. Maybe if he acted busy, Avie'd leave him be. He rattled the racked dishes. "Yeah." It usually took Avie ten minutes or so to wash dishes. "Think so." Since Marten managed to do it in a third of that, he could usually steal out for a smoke without Avie any the wiser. Two left. Damn, one for now and one for tonight. Marten figured he might be able to weasel Conny at the gas station out of one of the crushed cartons if he promised to sweep the garage or something.

"Bring out a slice for the customer at the counter." Shit. No smokes. "I'm loading coffee, got my hands full."

Damn, he should have pretended not to hear. He'd have made Avie pissy, but she'd have gotten the pie herself. What could he say to get out of it?

You don't want to get out of it.

That silky voice stirred in his brain again and shot chills down his spine.