Give Me Your Answer True

by Suanne Laqueur

  She blew her breath out. “But it was short-lived. We came back to school in January and everything fell apart. Lucky had a miscarriage. She bled out all over our bathroom floor and Erik went in to help her. The sight of the blood… It unlocked something in him and he unraveled. We all were shaken up by it and then started the drugs.”

  “Ah.” Rita turned a page. “What were you doing?”

  “In the beginning, mostly cocaine.”

  “Where were you getting it?”

  “From David. He was always into some kind of shit and we got into it too. Coke during the week. Weekends we did a lot of ecstasy. And then David introduced us to the high roll.”

  “DAIS.”

  A finger snapped in front of her staring eyes.

  Daisy shook her head and looked at the boy next to her. A tilted chin and sunny smile. Brows furrowed above questioning eyes.

  “Where did you go?” he asked softly.

  Open-mouthed, she shook her head and gazed in slow-motion. Her brain took an eternity to identify this as the living room.

  I live here.

  I am.

  I exist.

  She stared at the beautiful boy next to her. Another oozing interval of time before she remembered he belonged to her. Her atoms stirred in interest and her mouth grew wet.

  “Erik,” she said. As if she hadn’t seen him in years.

  “Come back,” he said. “Don’t leave me.” He fell face-first into her neck, giggling. “Oh my God. I’m so fucking high.”

  “Me too,” she said, pushing the words through a mouth that seemed full of buttercream frosting, so rich it made a nauseous thrum in the back of her throat. Her hand went to Erik’s head. She felt all his hairs on her palm. She could count them. In fact, she could gladly sit here the rest of her life and count every single one. Differentiate the blond, the ash, the brown and the gold. She ran her hand along the velvet nap at his nape—she giggled at nap and nape—mesmerized by push and pull of tiny hairs.

  Nap. Nape.

  Push. Pull.

  Pill.

  David gave them a magic pill.

  He called it a high roll—smoking a joint and then doing a hit of ecstasy. Now Daisy’s mouth was a cake and Erik’s hair was a waterfall. A field of wheat. An army of fine lines. Legions purring under her palm.

  “Touch me forever,” he said, his smile a delicious thing.

  She wanted to eat him. She was beyond high. No greater vertical existed. She was at the apex of consciousness where the air thinned into cosmic dust. She was a star. She burned. No need for molecules of oxygen. She was breathing the universe. It was so beautiful.

  David was gone. Like Santa Claus he bestowed his gifts upon them and then disappeared up the chimney. Will and Lucky were making out on the floor. Writhing and heavy and oblivious. Daisy stared, full of love and fascination. Shirtless and tattooed like a serpent, Will slid beautiful hands up into Lucky’s sweater and drew it over her head. And Lucky, who had barely cracked a smile in weeks, was laughing around his kiss. Even her curls were laughing snakes…

  Erik was kissing Daisy’s neck. Moving her hair and sliding hot, shaking lips along her skin. She turned her head, caught his mouth. The kiss swirled and meshed like a kaleidoscope. Kissing was magic. Had she ever truly appreciated it before tonight? A sigh echoed within her head as she pulled his tongue against hers. She could do this forever. Thank God for kissing. If only everyone on earth would kiss like this, it could be the end of war and…

  She opened her eyes. Her sighing head melted into laughter as she realized it was her own tongue she was orchestrating world peace with.

  “I’m kissing myself,” she said, fingertips against her mouth. She had a mouth. She was a mouthed human being inhabiting earth. A planet hurtling through space and time and how did it all begin?

  “Kiss me,” Erik said, pulling her into him. His mouth grabbed hers, catching her lip with the edge of a tooth. The bite of pain was a sword thrusting blue through the gooey coral and gold in her head. His hands curved around her breasts, thumbs moving in small tight circles. A prickling excitement radiated out from between her legs as she kissed him harder, chafing the little scrape on the inside of her lip. Pain and pleasure swirled together in a double helix and she came. Just a little one. But deep. A single, quick squeeze at the crux of herself.

  “Do that again,” she whispered.

  Erik took her soft, electric hands and pulled her off the couch, stumbling backwards. His face was wide-eyed, laughing wonder. “It’s all caramel in my head,” he said.

  He pushed her up ahead of him on the stairs. Every other step she turned to kiss him, wanting the edge of his teeth again and the blue squeeze down in her belly. Her mouth had never known such hunger. She was so high. So skinless and wide open and floating in a dimension of desire utterly foreign to her.

  Do it again. Make it hurt.

  Part of her had sliced itself off and now circled her ankles with the frenetic figure eights of a cat in heat. Trying to formulate a request she barely understood.

  Do it.

  Closed up in her room, they kissed in the Christmas lights. Erik reached behind, took hold of the back of his shirt and drew it forward, over his head. Her chin tilted in wonder. She had never noticed before how a boy took his shirt off from back to front. He slid one beautiful arm then the other out of the sleeves and it was a revelation. Her own arms crossed, took hold of her shirt at opposite sides and took it off the way a girl did: from the hem up.

  He was a boy. She was a girl. They touched. His skin was bronze and copper and gold. Her hand made ripples over his chest and shoulders and melted into him. She could reach within and put her fingers gently around his heart like it was the fragile, unfused skull of a newborn baby.

  She watched him take the rest of his clothes off. Belt and snap and zipper. A snake shedding its skin. Naked like that newborn, but strong and male and forged from metal. She ran her finger along the chain around his neck. St. Birgitta smiled at her. The fish winked its single golden eye. The beauty of the links and a legacy passed from man to man.

  Father to son.

  “I’m gonna have your baby someday,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “Only one?” His hands slid down the back of her opened jeans, pushing them down and pulling her belly against his. His mouth running up her neck, over her chin. He kissed her top lip. Then her bottom. And whispered into her mouth. “Have two.”

  She kicked her legs free of her pants. Pushed Erik down on the bed and knelt across one of his legs. Drew his shaking lips up into hers as she ground her hips down on his thigh. Sliding and rubbing. Catching the sweet spot. It wasn’t working. Something was missing.

  “Come, honey,” he whispered.

  I can’t, she thought, writhing in frustration.

  His hands slid along her head. Ten fingers wove into her tresses. Folded into fists. A crackle of blue light as he pulled her hair.

  “Yes.” Her eyes closed as the S stretched out long, the hiss of a tattooed serpent.

  “Come for me,” he said. He released his grip and the bite of pain at her scalp dissolved.

  “Do that again,” she said.

  “What.”

  “Pull my hair.”

  He did.

  “Harder,” she said, making her voice swirl a finger in the caramel inside his head.

  She felt his hesitation. Then he pulled.

  “Feels good,” she said into his mouth, kissing him with open eyes. Feeding him her burnt sugar fingers to suck. “You’re so good.”

  He tugged, slow and hard. Her follicles howled and a sharp noise slipped out of her chest.

  “Too much?”

  “More. I love it.” She pressed her teeth into his bottom lip and an involuntary groan, much like her own, tumbled out of him.

  She held his face in her hands. “Make it hurt,” she said, pushing him along, coaxing a child toward the classroom door. “It’s making me crazy. Feel how wet I am…�
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  He dragged her head onto his shoulder. She slid along his leg, slippery and swollen. Letting it build.

  “You’re such a good lover,” she said. Tongue running along the seashell whorls of his ear. “Nothing makes me come like you.”

  Another groan in his chest and his mouth grabbed hers, hard and smug. She had him by the ego. He loved to be called good. His hands pulled. His teeth stabbed. He was shedding his skin. Turning inside-out and transforming under her. Rebirthing. A hero. A god.

  “Come,” he said, his breath like cinnamon now. “Make that sweet little pussy come for me.”

  “You’re so good. Pull hard. Don’t stop. Erik…”

  The K splintered on her tongue and the world exploded under her eyes. Her hands hooked into claws, her nails pressing down into his skin. Deeper.

  Erik’s laughing delight filled her bones. He crooned her name over and under his breath, sing-speaking praises. “I love watching that. God, you’re beautiful.”

  He released her hair and wrapped his arms around her twitching, convulsing body. Her scalp throbbed with pain as the last bits of pleasure rippled out of her and onto his leg. She ran her mouth along his neck. Salt and sweet. The springs groaned as she toppled off him and fell down in the sheets.

  “I love when you come like that,” he said. “And tell me things like that.”

  She put her forearm over her eyes, pressed down until the back of her eyelids turned to swirling patterns of gold. “I’m so high,” she said.

  His hand ran over her head. “Did I pull too hard?”

  “Not hard enough.” She felt his thumb glide on her mouth and she touched her tongue to it, expecting to taste blood. Only skin and a hint of herself.

  I’m kissing myself.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  She took her arm away. Waited until a blob of black bloomed like a flower in her gold vision. Opening its petals to gradually reveal his face.

  “What just happened?” he said. “Why was that so good?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  His smile flickered, indulgent and knowing. Nice try, his eyes seemed to say.

  “Tell me,” he whispered.

  Her own eyes welled up. The space between their bodies shivered. Warped and rippled in tiny pinpricks of light. She was seeing their bond. It was real. A physical thing that existed between them. I was born for you, she thought. My voice was born to reach your ears. You were born to hear everything I have to say.

  “It was the hurting,” she said. “It’s all I can feel.”

  He nodded, his profile leaving trails in the sparkling air. “Me too.”

  His hand ran along her stomach, touched the fish tattoo. “I felt so alive just then,” he said. “Making you come. I felt like who I used to be.”

  “I can see us,” she said, moving her hand through the glittery air. He caught it in his and held it to his face.

  “Lately I feel like I’m either numb or dying. Nothing in the middle. Numb scares me. I’d almost rather die. At least it’s something.”

  “This is when you usually get anxious,” she said. “Are you? Right now? Are the wolves here?”

  “No,” he said. He slid against her body. “Feel how hard I am.”

  “You are.” She stroked his head.

  “I don’t want to stop feeling like this. I don’t care what it takes.”

  “Come here,” she said, pulling at him.

  “What is happening?” he said, pushing into her.

  “I’m not afraid. I want it.” She rested her hand on the small of his back. Felt skin ripple over muscles. Felt muscles move like continents, obeying the commands his brain sent along nerves, tendons and bones. Making his body move in her. He knew what to do.

  He was born for me.

  “I’m scared it will go too far, Dais.”

  “It’s just a different room in the cathedral,” she said. “It’s still ours. We built it. It’s all making love, remember? Nothing we make scares me.”

  He looked at her a long time. Then he began to nod. She had him. She held his face, kissed him deep, then let her arms drop over her head, finding the headboard. “Tie my hands,” she said.

  He got one of her scarves and bound her wrists tight. Knots were his friend. He knew how to tie off cables above the stage and secure the fly ropes in the wings. He wasn’t fooling around. He set his palms on her bowed elbows and leaned his weight down on her, his face hovering above hers. Something new and dangerous and beautiful in his eyes.

  She brushed her mouth against his. “I love you. Show me everything. Let me taste it. I want to feel you dying.”

  He stared at her. Swirling pinpricks in his eyes.

  “Do you trust me?” she said, as if he was the one tied up.

  He nodded, the tip of his nose brushing hers. “I only trust you. If I step too far off the edge of myself, you’re the only one who can pull me back.”

  “Unplug the lights,” she said. “Come into the dark with me.”

  Like a snake his arm slithered between the bed and the wall and the Christmas twinkles died. He leaned and yanked the drapes across the window, cutting most of the light from the street. He crawled up and over her again. His hands circled her tied wrists. She couldn’t see his face but somehow she knew it looked older. She felt it. The months since the shooting etched hard under his eyes.

  “Promise you’ll tell me when it’s enough.” A little bit of light flashed off his teeth.

  She licked his mouth. “I’ll tell.”

  It wasn’t enough. He came at her like a night terror. Backhanded her with his raw, brute need. His unchecked strength astonished her, then filled her veins like another drug. She pulled against her bonds and begged for more. By morning her wrists were ringed red and her upper arms wore his fingerprint bruises like a new tattoo. He fucked a hundred words out of her throat and not one was “stop.” They limped from bed, scratched and scraped, bone dry, hung over and wrung out black and exhausted.

  They didn’t know what it was.

  They knew it wasn’t enough.

  “HE SURPRISED ME,” Daisy said.

  “How?” Rita said.

  “Erik never had much artifice. He was drawn to the theater world but he wasn’t a theatrical person. Not a daydreamer or a pretender. But when he was high, he would shrug himself off and do anything. He liked cocaine more than I did. He really liked the confidence of that particular high. Coke made him a nut, a hyper goofball. He’d dance when he was coked up. But he dug the ecstasy too and on a high roll, he was sexually fearless. He’d play games, play any part. Be someone else. Tie me up. Even pretend he was raping me.” She drew her breath past her pounding heart. “I’ve never told anyone about this.”

  “Can you tell me?”

  She looked down at the ball of her clenched fingers. “It was… Something about the hurting. Something about when sex was rough or violent or even painful. I began to want it. Like another drug. I wanted him to hit me. To hurt me. Not in anger, though. It’s like…”

  She pulled one hand free and dug the heel of it against her eye, trying to press the idea into place. “It’s so hard to explain. So confusing and twisted because it was like him hurting me helped me feel safe. Does that even make sense?”

  “Don’t worry about sense,” Rita said. “You spill. I sort.”

  “If he hurt me, then nobody and nothing else could. Like violent sex was a vaccine against the world. One time, we…” Daisy stopped as a cold, nauseous wind blew through her chest. “Fuck,” she said, beginning to shake.

  “It’s all right,” Rita said. “Let it come to you. You’ve been here before and you always come out the other side.”

  Daisy pulled the chocolate brown pillow into her lap, holding on. Her arms were struck with the sudden need for a live being to clutch. A wise, sober dog. She needed to feel a heartbeat.

  “One time he was kissing me…and I bit him. Bit his lip. The blood was in our mouths. Not a lot but enough to taste.
”

  “Were you high?”

  “He rolled, I didn’t. We’d smoked a joint but only had one Ecstasy pill so he took it.”

  “I see.”

  “And when I made him bleed, he went off. Threw me face-first down on the floor, held my hands behind my back and gave it to me. And for the first time, I felt an edge of fear. Like I understood what he meant about going too far. I could see too far. See the line, the boundary. When you’re high like that, you get really visual and sensory. Existentially descriptive, you’re in the moment and narrating your life. I could feel my mind split down the center and one half was in pain. He was coming into me so hard, my eyeballs rattled. He was holding my hands behind my back and putting all his weight on me. I’d lost weight and I’m not built with a lot of cushion to begin with, so my hip bones were grinding into the floor, my shoulders were screaming. My face was against the throw rug so one cheekbone was taking the brunt of it all…”

  “And the other half?”

  “The other half was like the referee. Whistle in the mouth, eagle eye on the line. With this calm dry voice reminding me I was the only one who could pull him back. All I had to do was say stop or too much and he would back down.”

  “And was it getting to that point.”

  “Yes. But flirting with the boundary, seeing how close I could get to it.” She shook her head and spread her hands, holding the enormous bubble full of her confused, shameful secrets. “I don’t know how else to say it. Those nights up in my room, walking the line… I had the greatest orgasms of my life. I haven’t come that way since and I’m terrified I never will again. Under any circumstances. Whether it’s straight or sober, fucking or loving… I don’t know if I ever will feel the way I felt with him.”

  “Hold that thought a moment,” Rita said. “Don’t close the bubble yet. I want you to finish the night. You were flirting with the line. Did it get crossed? Did he stop when you told him, or did you even tell him?”

  Daisy closed her eyes. “I remember… My mind kind of took inventory. Triage. What was hurting me the most? What simply had to stop? And it was my shoulders. I think it must’ve been my ballet brain making the call. If he kept pulling on my shoulders like that, I wouldn’t be able to get them into fifth position the next day.”