Show Me

by Carole Hart

  He was feeling her breast through her blouse and bra. Fleetingly, she was grateful for the thick material of the bra; that made it less dirty, less of an invasion. But then he had pulled her blouse down over her shoulder and was reaching inside the bra cup to take her nipple between his fingers.

  The sensation hit like a bullet. She was holding her breath, holding still as if the waves of sensation might wash her away. The way he was pulling down her bra was uncomfortable, but above it her breast was prickling with the cold of the autumn air and receiving the attentions of his hand with an intoxicated alertness that made her fear seem small and stupid. When he bent his head to her breast and began to kiss it, she gasped. His lips fastened on her nipple, and he was licking its tip in tiny circles, making her breath come fast and weak.

  Then he was pulling up her skirt with an urgency that made her feel powerless. How could she tell him to stop? What if he was angry?

  He was pulling down her panties, his hand instantly, eagerly exploring the lush wetness there. His fingers were hard and confident, but the tingling and searing feeling was an invasion. She had to stop him. She had to get under control. Instead, she found herself arching her back, and she had only herself to blame when he slipped a finger inside her. I let him put his finger in me, she thought as it happened. The finger felt cold and unnatural. She was gritting her teeth against the desire, wanting him to move his finger against her more even as she needed him to stop.

  When he moved back on top of her, that shadow silhouette over her, she knew. He had taken her here to fuck her. That was what was happening. She was going to lose her virginity here, unless she said something. But she couldn’t say anything. He would know she was a kid, a stupid kid who told lies to seem cooler than she really was. If she said anything, she would start to cry, and he would be disgusted with her.

  When his penis touched her there, she caught her breath. This was real. He was really doing it. The tip poked once at her clitoris, a desperate, fearful pleasure. Then it found her slit and slid slowly, unstoppably, in. He was entering her; he was fucking her. She kept her eyes shut tight, thinking of broken hymens and blood. It was too big. It could never fit inside her. As he went deeper, it felt as if her flesh was being cranked open, farther and farther, until she wanted to scream that it was too much. She would die. But at last he was all the way in, held impossibly tightly in her cunt, a hard bar in her soft flesh. That’s his penis, she thought to herself, and at that moment, a sneaking pleasure insinuated itself into her pain and terror. It was a faint, cajoling pleasure; it vanished as he pulled out of her, only to come back louder when he thrust again. It warred with the voice of her torn flesh at first, but then joined it so that the pain became a different kind of pleasure, or the pleasure a different kind of pain. Oh, my God, he’s fucking me, she told herself. And her cunt suddenly gathered into a spasm of joy so strange and wild that she cried out, wanting to tell him to stop, but making only an unintelligible sound that could have been shock or gratitude. He moaned in her ear, his strokes booming harder now inside her. He must be doing some damage to her. He was killing her, but she half wanted to be killed. It was better to be killed by him than go back to her life. If this was the end . . . but as she thought this, he stiffened and moaned again. He fell hard into her, his cock straining up so deep that she bit her lip to keep from screaming.

  He relaxed, his body growing heavier on top of her. She could hardly breathe as his weight settled. She measured the time that passed in the gasps she managed, thinking, After twenty breaths, I’ll tell him to move. I’ll have to. All the pleasure was gone, turned to a draining hopelessness and shame. There was a trickling sensation between her legs, and she thought of the fluids there with repulsion. She was disgusting. Everyone was right about her. All she wanted in the world was to be in a shower, alone. She wanted to be alone for the rest of her life.

  At last he moved off of her; the cold of the night air was shocking, and she immediately scrambled to find her panties. She was sitting up, pulling her clothes back into place with clumsy panic. He said, “Hey, are you okay? Valerie?”

  “Yeah, I’m great,” she said. As she buttoned her blouse back up, the world was beginning to return to normal. She was covered, hidden, safe. If she’d had a coat . . .

  He said, “Did I go too far?”

  “No, I’m used to it,” she said flatly. “It’s nothing.”

  He laughed. “Exactly what a guy wants to hear.”

  She stood, arousing a stinging reminder from her cunt. She felt warped out of shape down there, and miserably dirtied and wet. If only the blood didn’t show. She had to get home before she bled through. She said, “I got to go. I got to get home.”

  “Okay,” he said, his voice a little colder. “Okay, I can go.”

  This time it was only a few steps to get out of the woods. The amusement park seemed luridly bright, full of people who stared at her, who knew what she’d been doing. Music blared from loudspeakers on the rides they passed, the various tunes mixing into a grotesque din. He was walking a little distance from her, apparently put out. Well, it didn’t matter. She was never going to see him again. She couldn’t bear to see him again.

  Without bothering to slow down, she said, “I got to go off alone. I mean, my mom will freak out if she sees you. She really will.”

  “Your mom? Oh, you didn’t drive here.”

  “No,” she said, annoyed. “I don’t have my license. I got to go home with my mom.” Suddenly, the idea of her mother was intensely comforting. Her mother would cry and threaten to kill the no-good motherfucker who hurt her. Her mother would pour her a glass of whiskey (she often tried to comfort Valerie with whiskey—well, this once it would work). Valerie would insist that it wasn’t Ralph’s fault; she would be generous. At last her mother would say, “Oh, never mind, sweetie, you’ll feel better in the morning.” They would watch a movie together. For once, Valerie would be the center of attention.

  Ralph had moved closer to her, scowling and trying to catch her eye. “You don’t have your license? Really?”

  She stopped to glare at him. The glare of the amusement park lights, his face was a mask of shadows and white, sweat-glistened planes. She wanted to turn and run away from him as fast as she could.

  “Wait,” he said. “How old are you?”

  She answered honestly without thinking. “I just turned fifteen.”

  TEN

  As his cock softened inside her, Emily couldn’t help heaving a mental sigh of relief. It was over for another week. Never mind if she still had five minutes of air time to fill; it wasn’t ideal, but at least it was Cal B., who could hardly be boring. He was a former model and the author of several scurrilous and hilarious novels about the world of fashion. At first she’d balked at having him on the show, because he was a little too frank about his reasons for doing it: “Publicity, publicity, publicity, and PR,” he’d said on the phone. “The way the book business is nowadays, I would fuck a cat in the middle of Times Square if it sold books.”

  It made her feel defensive when her show (and, implicitly, her body) was seen in such cynical terms. But Cal turned out to be charming company, much friendlier and less caustic in person than he was in his writing. Since In Depth progressed through three stages—the dinner date, the “fun” date, and the sex itself, she spent much of each week with that week’s guest. In the course of that week, she often heard the guest’s whole life story. Cal’s life story seemed to consist of a series of amazing anecdotes, often about celebrities who could not be named but whose identities could be easily guessed. There were tales of models being smuggled onto nuclear submarines; of a fashion designer who would only have sex with people—male or female—wearing a bodysuit stitched all over with feathers, and a cardboard beak; of his own parents, who were both performance artists and had spent a year communicating solely through drawings. He had also had more than his share of lovers, each of whom apparently mistreated him in absurd ways—but who were all, accordin
g to Cal, “now good friends.”

  Eight years after his retirement from the fashion world, he still looked like a stereotypical male model, with chiseled features, blazing blue eyes, and thick jet-black hair. He was gorgeous, he was sexy, he was funny, he was smart. Emily should have wanted to fuck him. Anyone would want to fuck him. On their “fun” date, they went behind the scenes at a fashion show, and Cal was besieged by frail, exquisite girls. They made big eyes at him and referred to dates with him in terms that made it plain he had slept with them all.

  Only, she didn’t want to fuck him. She didn’t want to sleep with anyone but Ralph Anderman. The idea of sleeping with Cal filled her with ennui.

  When the time had come, she had distracted herself by trying to give him the sexual experience of a lifetime. By treating it as an exercise of skill, she managed to enjoy herself without triggering her own guilt. It was gratifying to see his reaction to her electric touch and to the carefully planned blow job she gave him, with violent peaks and long, lazy spells of teasing. When they fucked, she was barely conscious of the physical pleasure it gave her. She didn’t want to think about physical pleasure. She almost resented her own body for responding to him.

  Now they lay in a careless tangle, Cal smiling blissfully at the experience, Emily smiling blissfully at the fact that it was over. And he said, in the drowsy, deep tones of thorough gratification, “I should tell you . . . I had a secret purpose in coming on the show today.”

  This wasn’t in the plans. Emily’s heart sank. If he did anything really outrageous, they might have to run the sex scene again. She said, with some trepidation, “And I guess you’re going to tell us that secret now?”

  With an enigmatic smile, he reached for his jeans on the floor. Reaching into the pocket, he pulled out a small velvet box and opened it to reveal a chunky diamond solitaire. He slipped off the bed and got down on one knee, striking a dramatic pose that was made faintly sculptural by his nudity. “Emily . . .”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Will you be my wife?”

  Emily actually looked directly at the camera, as if she could see through it to all the people who would eventually watch this at home, catch their eye, and receive some confirmation that she shouldn’t be expected to deal with this.

  Cal was saying, “You understand, I’m not a love person. I don’t do love.”

  Emily looked back at him, frowning. “So you want me to marry you why? Or is there going to be a punch line?”

  “We’ll be the first couple to openly marry purely for the publicity. It should put Hollywood to shame, with its seventy-year history of marrying for the publicity but pretending it’s for love. Everyone will act shocked, of course.”

  “You can’t do that, Cal.”

  “Any justice of the peace will marry us. It’s not against the law to marry without being in love, you know. I can marry anyone I like, as long as it’s a woman. I don’t have to love her or think she’s swell or believe in fairies or anything.”

  She smiled dazzlingly at camera one, trying to quell the shiver she felt going through her. “Well, we’re just about out of time on In Depth for this week. And from me, your hostess, Emily Lister, I’d like to say”—she turned to Cal—“no, I will not marry you—”

  “Damn!” he said. “Break my heart, why don’t you?”

  “—and good night.” Emily batted her eyelashes at the camera and waited for the call of “Cut!” Then she turned back to Cal and said quietly, “Why did you do that to me? Do you have any idea how unfair that was?”

  He cocked his head at her. “You’re acting as if I wasn’t serious.”

  “You were really hoping I’d do that? For publicity?”

  “Well, what’s wrong with it?”

  The cameramen were discreetly slipping away, pretending not to hear. Emily made a face at Cal, wondering if he was sincere. “Look, Cal, are you actually as cold-hearted as you pretend to be?”

  “It wasn’t meant to be cold-hearted. Seriously, I’m kind of unconventional, but not—”

  “I’m sorry. Forget it.” She reached for her robe, the familiar sight of which gave her a chill of depression. Of course she was the kind of person who attracted this sort of offer. This sort of proposal. Who would expect a porn star to be sentimental about marriage?

  “Honestly, Emily, it was meant as a compliment. If you think I would marry just anyone for the publicity, you’re wrong.”

  He was watching her with a friendly concern that was so out of synch with her feelings that she stopped to frown at him, the robe held up over her still-naked breasts. Of course, her reaction was more about Ralph than about Cal.

  “Now I’m feeling bad about this,” he said. “Note that I wouldn’t bother to feel bad about just anyone.” He smiled at her.

  “Oh . . . I think I’m just having a bad week with men, in general.”

  “Oh, so you’re saying you’re upset about some other guy?”

  She smiled weakly. “Well . . .”

  He shrugged. “That hurts. Well, in my own way, I am terribly disappointed that you’re not going to marry me. And it’s not just the publicity.”

  “But I’m a love person. I do love.”

  “Well, good luck with your love,” he said, and reached for his complimentary In Depth robe. “But if it doesn’t work out . . . I’ll be single for at least another month.”

  Emily tried to go back to her dressing room, but the hallway leading up to it was haunted by the ghost of Ralph Anderman. Before you go, could I invite you to lunch? he had said. I can wait exactly ten minutes. If she went into that hallway, it would be only to check whether he was there. He wasn’t there; she knew he wasn’t there. Still, going to her dressing room after he wasn’t there would be so depressing that the thought of it frightened her.

  Instead, she decided to go see Jared, who was doing voice-overs for an episode of Meet the Wife on the tenth floor. He would be finished in an hour. Maybe he could take her to lunch, or take her home to his place to sit around eating ice cream all night. The thought of fucking him passed through her mind and made her frown. No, not this time. Jared wouldn’t mind.

  She took the stairs. The elevator was used by staff from the insurance offices on the top floor; ordinary office workers in suits, carrying briefcases and laptops. Some days she didn’t care; she would even sign autographs and answer predictable questions about the most recent star she’d fucked. On a good day, it wouldn’t have mattered that she was barefoot, in a flimsy silk robe. Today she not only didn’t want to appear in public in her debauched, tousled, half-exposed work guise; she didn’t want to appear in public with Emily Lister’s face.

  When she arrived at the studio, Jared was sitting at a microphone, watching the footage of Meet the Wife on a big monitor while following along on a paper script. A bored technician and producer sat to one side, yawning at readouts on consoles. The lights were dimmed, and at first Emily didn’t see the fourth person in the room—a lanky redheaded girl sitting cross-legged on the floor in one corner. The girl was staring not at the monitor but at Jared himself, as if her life depended on the words coming out of his mouth.

  Jared said, “Anna has been married for ten years. She loves her husband, David, very deeply, but sometimes she wants more.”

  On the monitor, Anna, a slim blonde in her early thirties, was shown unpacking groceries from the trunk of her car, then exercising on an elliptical machine in front of the TV, then throwing a stick for a Boston terrier in her backyard. Her voice was now heard on the voice-over: “I really want to have a child with David and settle into being middle-aged and, you know, boring. But before I do that, I want to have some experiences—things I missed out on because I found the right guy a little early.”

  Jared read, “Anna and David met when they were twenty-two.” (The monitor now showed David, a good-looking, thickset man with impressively developed forearms, coming home from work and hugging his wife.) “They both knew immediately that th
ey’d found the one.”

  Now David’s voice was heard on the voice-over. “Anna and I are very alike. Very alike. We like all the same movies, the same bands. We have no friction. But part of that is that we both feel a little . . . like we missed out on some of the wilder parts of being young. Some of the more freewheeling sex that our friends had.”

  Jared read, “David and Anna didn’t want to have an open marriage. They were afraid the jealousy would destroy their relationship. So they decided to try an even more unconventional arrangement.”

  Anna was now shown in an office, talking to a young man at his desk. Her voice could be heard saying, “So, I’ve always been attracted to you. I mean, the day you were hired and you came into the office . . .” The volume of her voice faded, and Jared began to read again.

  “Every three months, Anna and David invite two very special guests to their Montclair, New Jersey, home. Anna invites a man; David invites a woman. All the visits have one thing in common.”

  Now David was shown talking to Jared himself, in the same living room that was shown before, the elliptical machine in the background. David said, “So we decided that if we were always in the same room, that would make the situation feel more controllable. Because Anna knows that if she doesn’t feel comfortable, if she is getting really jealous watching me with another girl, she can call it off. That’s our agreement.”

  “And has that ever happened?” Jared asked.

  “Not so far.” David smiled a little bashfully.

  “But from the look on your face, it’s been close?”

  “I had a bad night once. But the amazing thing was, the jealousy was really hot. It was one of the peak sexual experiences of my life.”

  Jared began to read again, as the film went to Anna slowly stripping in front of a mirror. The camera zoomed out to show that both David and her young coworker were watching her from the bed.