Thirty

by Lawrence Block

  Because of the way it scares me.

  The two of us have been getting much more deeply into sex the past week or so. Doing things we hadn’t done previously. We go down on each other, for example, lunching in marathon bouts of sixty-nine. Which is not scary in and of itself. It’s the conversations we have before and after and the effect they have upon the sex.

  How to explain?

  Oh, he talks about threesomes and group sex, not only in an effort to convince me to try it but also because the talking stimulates him. (Be honest. Stimulates us.) He talks about things he’s done and things he’s seen others do. Sometimes he’s almost blindingly graphic and other times he is annoyingly oblique, so that my own mind finds itself sketching in the details he has omitted, enlarging the fantasy.

  And then, when we make love, the fantasy of what we have discussed slips in on the heels of the actual sex we are having. It is very strange. I clutch his buttocks in my hands and take his penis in my mouth while he gobbles away between my thighs, and somewhere in my mind behind my closed eyelids he is a girl eating at me and—

  I can’t explain it. It’s something that was happening more in the mind than in the flesh and I don’t know how to make words out of it.

  But it was scary, and I knew we were going to do scarier things as time went by. And that I wanted to do them, and would let them happen.

  So I started a fight in an effort to break up with him, and I haven’t heard from him.

  So I guess it worked.

  I don’t know whether I’m glad or not. I really don’t know. I wish he would call and I hope he won’t call and, oh, maybe I should just go out and find somebody to ball to get my mind off all this.

  I know one thing. If he called now and said he had a male friend over and why didn’t I just come over and join them, I would go. No question. I would go and I would do everything. I hope it doesn’t happen but if it did I would.

  Sick sick sick.

  March 17

  Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

  March 23

  Sitting in the coffee house absolutely all strung out. This black pit of depression has been deepening all week, a really fragmented sense of self. Sitting and turning the pages of a book and not retaining anything of what I was reading. My mind wandering all over the place.

  “Jan.”

  I look up. It is Eric.

  “You are ready, aren’t you?”

  “Pardon?”

  “I have been watching you. You’re ready now.”

  “For what?”

  “To be yourself.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I think you do.”

  The power of his eyes, his voice. He draws me and mesmerizes me.

  “Come with me.”

  I stand, put coins on the table, grab up my purse and book. He takes my arm. We walk through slushy gray afternoon streets. He strides. I have to walk very quickly to keep up with him.

  “Where are we going?”

  “My apartment.”

  He lives south and west on a block I don’t know. His building is drab brick. It looks dismal. He unlocks doors and I follow him inside, up one flight of stairs. He unlocks a door. We walk into another world, a complete departure from the neighborhood, the buildings, the stairway, the hall.

  Extreme modern furnishings, but with everything exquisitely selected. No straight lines. Everything curved, flowing. Everything perfectly rounded. Bold colors, black and white and a deep red. A black, high-pile fur rug on the parquet floor. A massive white couch, white velvet. Scarlet draperies.

  “How beautiful!”

  “I’m comfortable here.”

  “I’ve never been anyplace like this.”

  “You are going to go to many places you have never been.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I’m—”

  “Yes?”

  “Afraid.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “Yes. Twenty-nine years in the bud. And now you are going to open yourself up. You are going to become a flower.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Eric.”

  “I mean, oh, what do you do?”

  A rich smile. “You’ll see.”

  He leaves me momentarily, brings two glasses of a dark red liquid that matches the drapes. I take a glass. The scent is of rose petals.

  “What is it?”

  “Drink it.”

  The taste is sweet-and-sour, not unpleasant but quite unusual. There does not seem to be any alcohol in it. I am aware that the drink probably contains a drug. But it does not occur to me to refuse.

  There is music, something faintly Oriental. There is the aroma of rose petals lingering after the drinks are gone. He touches my shoulder. I look into his eyes. They have infinite depth. One could drown in them.

  We kiss. His hands are firm, gripping my shoulders, drawing me close. His mouth is hard against mine. I open to him entirely and his tongue is deep in my mouth, searing me, shooting flames. I am alive in every part of my body. I can feel his legs against mine, his chest against my breasts, his hands on me, his mouth on mine. I feel everything at once and am aware of everything at once, the taste of him, the feel of him, the music, the rose scent, everything.

  In his bedroom he tells me to take off my clothing. I undress artlessly as in a dream, taking things off, dropping them. His bed is huge. It fills the room.

  His eyes are on me as I undress. I can feel his gaze. There is warmth in it, as if a beam from his eye touches me. I feel his gaze on my breasts and their tips quiver and grow warm. I feel his eyes stroke my belly and thighs like fiery hands, like tongues of flame.

  I have no will, I have no will at all.

  He strips swiftly. I watch him. His body is beautiful, he is as all men should be, big in the chest, flat in the stomach, sloping shoulders, no fat anywhere, just enough hard muscle. His penis is huge, fully erect, a column of ivory topped with a fiery red sphere.

  He crosses the room to me. He takes me in his arms. He puts me on the bed.

  His hands are everywhere, touching me, preparing me. He strokes my shoulders and my breasts, runs his hands down to my thighs, opens me. He handles all the parts of my sex and his fingers start little fires wherever they touch me. My head is floating, my whole body is floating, my flesh is melting, I am alive for the first time, I am dying, I am everything at once.

  He positions himself over me. The tip of his penis is poised at my entrance. I throb, wet, hot. He touches me, comes just a little ways into me, just half of the head of his penis enters me.

  I begin to shudder.

  He is huge. I am hot, I am wet, I am open, but still he must enter me little by little, must enter me by degrees. He begins to withdraw, and then he thrusts gently forward again and the entire head is inside me and I am on fire.

  Only his penis touches me. None of the rest of him is in contact with my flesh. He supports his weight on his hands on either side of me, and his penis labors upon me as if it is his entire self.

  He works himself in and out, in and out, and I pant and moan and writhe in involuntary motions, and all of his penis is all the way inside me, and I can feel him pressing against the back of my womb, I can feel him all the way up to my neck, not merely my vagina but my entire body is filled with him, and he presses all the way in and holds it there, and I seem to swoon, I go off somewhere deep in the private places of my mind.

  And then he begins. He withdraws all the way, all the way, so that even the very tip is about to leave me, and I want to cry out, I want to scream for him, and then he rams himself home again, home again, and out and in and out and in, slowly at first and then faster, and it is as if I have never been fucked before because no one has ever fucked me like this before, no one has ever owned me before, no one has ever possessed me before, no one has ever utterly controlled me before.

  Faster and faster, harder, s
o that there is pain in the banging together of our pubic ridges, but the pain is part of it, a good part of it, and faster and harder and he is fucking me like a great stallion, he is fucking me to death, and I am swept up by new sensations, dreamed but unknown sensations, faster harder higher and I come in colors, I come in bursts of red and yellow and blue and purple and green and orange, fiery electric bursts of color and I open and I explode and I come come come.

  He stops, stops with the full force of my orgasm, stops deep within me, hard within me, a steel-ivory-fire rod inside me. And waits, hard within me, while the colors blink out and fade gently away and only the sweet warm all-enveloping glow remains.

  He has not come yet.

  He is not finished.

  He withdraws, slowly, and my cunt grabs at him, wants to retain him, but he pulls away and exits with a little sweet popping sound.

  I feel tears welling up and think I am about to cry for his absence.

  But his hands are on me, turning me over, arranging me in the position he wants me in. On my knees, head flung forward, knees up toward my chest, bottom high, breasts hanging downward. He touches my shoulders and the sides of my chest. He is behind me, crouching over me.

  He cups my buttocks in his huge strong hands. Tugs them apart, puts a finger in their cleft.

  Then releases them, puts both hands around my chest and on my breasts.

  And squeezes with all his strength.

  I scream. The pain is extraordinary, his fingers are digging into my breasts, his nails bite the skin, and the scream is torn from my throat.

  He releases my breasts, seizes my buttocks. Pulls them apart, places his penis in their cleft, and forces his way inside.

  I scream. Louder than before, and go on screaming as he rams his huge cock into my asshole. I feel as though I am literally being torn in two. There has never been pain like this before, and I scream, I shriek, and it is as if I am making no sound at all. He utterly ignores my cries, ignores my pain. He uses me as he wishes to use me.

  His hands on my buttocks, holding me firmly in place. His hips surging, in and out, in and out, not gentle at all, not preparing me as before, but fucking me brutally and furiously, with the pain getting constantly worse, and I scream, I scream, I think I am going to die of it.

  And then, oh, oh, so strange—

  The pain does not end, there is no end to the pain, there is no dropping off of the pain, but something happens in spite of the pain or on top of the pain or around the pain, something happens, something strange happens. I begin, oh, I begin to like it. It is still pain, it still hurts me, it still tears screams from my throat, but now I like it.

  And I come from it. I roil, I boil, and with his last furious thrust into my bowels I come. Not as I have ever come before. Because I come there, in my anus, with the muscle contracting spasmodically around the great length of his cock, milking at him, and the vibrations spreading from that place through my whole body, colors again, I come in colors, but all yellows and golds and reds, no other colors, yellows and golds and reds.

  He still has not come. He withdraws from me, a cork from a bottle, pop. I remain as he has arranged me. Face down, knees drawn to breasts, eyes closed, chest heaving. Pain in my bowels, pain in my breasts. But with it the most extraordinary sense of freedom, of liberation.

  His hands on me.

  Rolling me over, sitting me up, propping me against pillows. There is no tenderness in his touch, but sureness. His hand is on the back of my head, bunching up the hair, gripping it. He guides my face down toward his penis.

  There are flecks of blood and traces of my parts. I smell myself upon him.

  I do not want to suck him.

  I want to suck him.

  He guides my face to him. I open my mouth, take the tip of him inside. I taste and smell myself, my juices. My head spins. He forces my head down further. I am afraid that I will gag. He fills my mouth, he touches the back of my throat, but I do not gag.

  I love him with my lips and tongue, I use my mouth as a plunger, up and down the length of the ivory shaft. I am intoxicated with that penis, I am involved with it with all my being, involved from head to toe with that penis. It is a part of me and I an extension of it, and I suck him, I suck him, and my lips and my tongue are completely given over to this and all my sense of self concentrated in that penis and my mouth upon that penis, and I want to swallow him cock and balls, I want to eat him alive, I want him down my throat and into my stomach and guts, I want him inside me, all of him, and I suck him and he comes in a spurting jet and I suck up every bit of it and swallow it down. And I come doing this, I actually come, I never thought it was possible, but it happens.

  And the world slips sideways, and the colors fade to black, and I sleep.

  March 24

  I wrote all that yesterday as soon as I got home from Eric’s apartment. I had to put it down just that way, just as it occurred. I read it again now and it is right. I thought I might not get it right, but it worked. I had to do it in the present tense, as if I was putting myself back into it and describing it as if it were a film.

  I must keep this diary. He does not know about it. He must not know about it.

  I cannot believe that anything like yesterday has ever happened to anyone in the world before. Of course this is a conceit on my part, but what I experienced was inconceivable.

  I wonder what was in the drink. What drug. And how much of what took place was caused by the drug. I asked, but he did not answer me.

  After I awoke I showered, then looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. My perception was still affected by the drug, but I could still see that I did in fact look somehow different. There were new hollows under my eyes and in my cheeks. I had a slight haunted look about me.

  And it seemed to me that I looked quite beautiful. One might do an article on it. The Cosmetic Properties of Bestial Fucking. For the great mass of women with no access to Eric, one might prescribe a bucolic interlude with a stallion.

  The lady jokes—

  Before I left I asked him what he wanted of me.

  “To show you everything. To show you yourself, to watch you grow.”

  “When will you want to see me?”

  “From time to time. You might be at home in the afternoons. From two-thirty to three, for example. If I want to see you I will call you then.”

  “I’ll give you my number.”

  “I have it.”

  I didn’t ask how he’d gotten it. The telephone is still in the sculptor’s name. There are any number of ways he could have gotten the number, I suppose.

  “What will we—”

  “Yes?”

  “What will we do?”

  “Everything.”

  “Will it always hurt?”

  He laughed, then broke it off. “No, of course not. Nothing is without purpose. I had to reach you today, in new ways.”

  “You reached me.”

  “You will learn new things about your body, Jan. About yourself. It won’t usually hurt.”

  I nodded.

  “But what if it would?”

  I considered. “I would still do what you want me to do.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I . . . have to.”

  “That’s right, Jan. You may go now.”

  He has not called today. It is after three now and he has not called, which presumably means that he does not want me today. And I do not even know if I am glad or sorry.

  I do not understand any of this. I cannot understand it. Things are happening to me that I do not understand. Who is he? What is he? What does he do for a living? What does he want from me? Obviously he has done this sort of thing with other girls in the past. My God, the man is Superfuck himself, he could get any girl he wanted any time he wanted and have her crawling through hoops in an instant. It’s not just me, it can’t be. But who the hell is he?

  And what does he do with his women when he’s done with them?

  What do I do, for exampl
e, if someone like Arnold calls? What do I tell him? Does Eric want me to see other people? To have sex with other people? I don’t know. But I do know that I will probably do whatever he wants me to do.

  What is it about him?

  I could leave. Right now, turn my back on this, go. I would not even need to pack. There is nothing here that I have that is so important.

  I could go back. To the house, to the car, to the husband. I could do this. He might take me back, he might not, it doesn’t matter, the house and friends always belong to the wife. I could go back, and he could live with me or not, his choice, or even my choice if I wanted it to be that way. But either way I could be out of this apartment, neighborhood, life, away from Eric.

  If I want.

  Or could I?

  I’ve known for some time that it is a sex thing that drives me. That I am compulsive, that this is some kind of compulsive behavior pattern I am going through. I have ideas as to why this is happening and where it is going, a batch of ideas, some in conflict, and I have put some of them down here and there in this book, and I have had others that I have not put down.

  But I did not expect this. This person. I am afraid of him. He is too strong. If I belong so utterly to him, how can I belong to myself? How can I have any of me left?

  March 27

  He called me and I went there. We had sex, did different things. I am not going to write about it, describing it. I don’t feel the need tonight.

  Afterward we sat on the large white couch facing the fireplace. There was a coal fire banked in a grate. We ate cheese and drank plum wine.

  A day before I had seen him on the street with the blond girl. They did not see me.

  I asked about her.

  “Susan? Yes, you’ve seen me with her. What about her?”

  “I used to wonder if she were your daughter.”

  “And do you wonder still?”

  “You’re teasing me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course I suppose she is your mistress.”