“Tal, it’s time to fuck me. We’re not really going out.”
He kneels and pulls something from the rucksack. A tiny, plastic, powder-blue butterfly, maybe an inch in diameter. Black straps dangle from it.
He lifts my feet out from under me and slips the straps round them. I hiss when the cuffs bite into me. When I can stand again, I realize he’s fitting the straps over my hips like a harness. I twist to look; the butterfly rests lightly over my raging clit. The labia are ready to swallow it. It looks ludicrously innocent. I can feel that I’m blushing, hard.
“You know the best part?” Tal’s narrow eyes are on mine.
“It matches my dress?”
His hand moves to his pocket and the butterfly jumps to life. It hovers, buzzing greedily as if I were a deep, thick-petaled flower. The vibrations spread through my labia to my ass. My cunt is furious and I pull at the shower rod. Plaster shakes loose at the bolts and settles to the floor. Tal looks ready to eat me.
“Tal, Tal.” My voice sounds small and tight. “It’s not enough. Tal.”
“Pace yourself.”
“You motherfucking . . . motherfucker.” I’m moving my legs, grinding my hips until I see him crouch down to watch more closely.
“That sounds like a hurt word. I’m afraid it’s quiet time again. But if you really want a gag, keep talking. I have this red one. It holds your jaws apart.”
He opens my cabinet and finds some make-up. He grabs a fistful of hair at the base of my skull while he wipes the sweat off my forehead and upper lip.
“You look delicious as you are. You don’t need any blush. I want to add lipstick, though.” He leans into my swinging breasts, still gripping my hair.
He murmurs like someone drunk with love as he licks the top of each breast. He can only manage two or three words between kisses. “If you try – to sneak away – and rub this off – you’ll wear bells – all night.” With the lipstick he smoothes my black nipples into long, sticky, crimson peaks. I want to cry but even that release won’t come.
When he turns the butterfly to low I can breathe again, but it still takes all my concentration to keep my hips still. I watch the long, smooth curve of his cheekbones as he reaches over my head. His throat is a little swollen.
“We’ve been meaning to go dancing for so long,” Tal purrs. He unlocks my wrists and massages my arms. He slips the dress over my head and helps me into my shoes.
He holds my head gently now, questions fluttering over his lashes again. I lean forward and bite his pink lower lip. When I pull back his eyes are pure limpid bliss.
Señor Frog’s is crowded on Friday nights, a tiny neon box, tucked under the freeway overpass. Salsa beats through its thin walls. Crowds huddle against the wind, hurrying over the black ice that gleams multicolored over the parking lot. Inside, chairs and tables have been pushed to the corners. The dance floor, the lobby, the dark hallway to the kitchen, every inch is thick with dancers. The crowds clear reverently for the best couples. A haze of smoke and perfumed steam hangs under the low ceiling.
I’m brought straight back to my cunt when the butterfly jumps again. My cry isn’t heard over the music, but I turn to Tal’s eyes, hard as ebony. I try to move away, but we’re pushed hip to hip. We’ve eased into a slow merengue, his hand resting on the small of my back. Our bellies cleave, his shirt buttons flick over my nipples. In my mind, I undress him quickly, suck him hard, and impale myself on him several times, here on the uneven floor. I doubt many would notice.
He tugs at my hair and kisses my ear. “Dance with anyone who asks.”
He’s gone. The butterfly is on low. I clasp my hands together tight, looking down.
Soon I’m asked to dance. A tall, quiet man tries to lead me in country dances I never learned. I do my best to follow, watching his feet, almost forgetting the relentless little sting of pleasure. I look up to find his eyes transfixed on my vivid nipples. I can’t keep them from pushing out farther. Just before the music finishes, the butterfly surges to high and I have to stop moving, clutching my hands over my mouth. Two desperate moans escape. My partner stops, alarmed, asking if he’s stepped on me. I do what I can to reassure him. I thank him, panting, and stumble away into the crowd.
I can’t find Tal.
But he must see me because the torment ebbs as soon as another man asks me to dance.
A hazel-eyed professor rests his tense fingers on my back, shaking as if I were a silk-covered bomb. He ignores the music and moves me in a slow orbit across the floor. He cries out at the end of the song when my fingernails sink into his wrist. I leave without looking at him.
A Haitian man, dreadlocks flying, twirls me on every fourth beat. The room spins in front of my eyes as his dark hands nudge my shoulder or tug my wrist. Our stomachs meet as a new phrase starts; his teeth flash as he laughs. He is irrepressible, radiant as a bride. I press my forehead to his at the end of the song, watching his full, soft lips as he speaks. Tal turns me up, and I pull away.
A very young student asks me. I wait for him to look up at my face before I say yes. His drenched silk shirt is nearly sliding off his smooth chest. He carefully strokes my neck as we settle into our rhythm and I smile, imagining that’s step five in some article he’s memorized: Ten Moves Chicks Dig.
He turns me and I see Tal, watching. Girls surround him like fireflies.
I make it to Tal before he can reach his pocket. He grabs at my wrist – but it’s I who leads him to the women’s bathroom.
Two elegant grandmas are sashaying out just as we arrive. One winks at me. I slam Tal against the far wall, harder than I meant to, then turn towards the door.
The ladies are still there.
“We’re not well,” I tell them. I lock the door.
I turn back to a heap of clothes. Tal, naked, is sitting on the counter, gleaming under the vanity lights. His skin is flushed and velvety as rose petals. His cock swings up, vein-covered. Stretched to its capacity, hard as a gold ingot, shimmering like fresh honey. His knuckles are white as he braces himself on the grimy ledge. His eyes are wide and starving.
My hair falls over his belly and clings to his wet skin. The sweet head of his cock nearly chokes me. I stretch my lips over him, tickling his balls, running my tongue over the crinkled, pulsing flesh. My jaws ache but I would do anything to coax that choked falsetto cry from him.
He’s begging now. I jump on the counter, one foot on either side of his waist. I lower into a squat, letting him nuzzle into my slick folds.
There’s a knock at the door. I slap Tal’s face when he looks over.
He grips the counter hard and pushes his pelvis up as best he can. I reach under him to feel his clenching ass. Sweat drips between my fingers. I lift my cunt away from him and bend down to lap at his stomach.
I start to come as soon as his nails sink into my shoulders. I am bent over so swiftly that the breath is knocked out of me. He fits his hand over my skull and presses my cheek into the countertop. He throws my dress over my back.
I try to reach back towards him, hands curling.
“Jesus, Tal. You have to do it.”
He slides in as soon as I begin to speak, so the last word stretches into an unhinged wail. He only has time for one slow rotation of his hips, caressing my wet, aching inner walls. The butterfly cracks as I grind it into the formica.
As he starts to thrust, I push my hands into the mirror so that I can writhe against him, pleasure flashing from the base of my spine, spreading through my body. For a long moment I’m half-dead, stretched still as my cunt opens and closes on him like a sea anemone.
He releases my head and collapses on me when he comes, sobbing, “Fuck, fuck,” with his last thrusts. Stars circle in front of my eyes, white and gold and violet.
Five minutes later, the icy wind sucks the air out of our lungs. We cling to each other, shaking, disheveled, laughing madly. The steady pulse of music fades behind us as we run to the car.
Secretly Wishing for Rain
Claude Lalumière
My palm pressed between Tamara’s small breasts, I feel her heartbeat. The raindrops pounding on the skylight reflect the city lights, provide our only illumination. Tamara’s fingers are entwined in my chest hair; my perception of the rhythm of my heart is intensified by the warm, steady pressure of her hand.
This mutual pressing of hands against chests is our nightly ritual. Our faces almost touching, we silently stare at each other in the gloom. This is how it is for me (and how I believe it must also be for her): I abandon myself to the dim reflection of light in her eyes, the rhythms of our hearts, the softness of her skin, the pressure of her hand; I let go of all conscious thought or intent. We whisper meaningless absurdities to each other. One of us says: “There are fishes so beautiful that cinnamon nectar spouts from their eyeballs”; the other replies: “Your mouth is infinite space and contains all the marvels of gravity.” Most nights we explore each other’s flesh, reveling in each other’s smells and touches. Deliriously abandoned in each other’s embrace, we reach orgasm, remembering the loss that binds us. Some nights, as tonight, we simply fall asleep, snugly interwined.
The cliché would be that I was jealous of Andrei’s mischievous charm, his tall-dark-and-handsome good looks, his quick wit, his svelte elegance, his easy way with women . . . but no. His omnipotent charm defused the pissing-contest resentment that heterosexual pretty boys usually provoke in the rest of the straight male population. Everyone – men, women, straights, gays – was helpless before his androgynous beauty, his complicit grin, and his playful brashness. Perhaps I was even more helpless than most.
Andrei avoided being in the company of more than one person at a time. Whoever he was with enjoyed the full intensity of his meticulous attention. I never felt so alive as when I basked in his gaze.
Andrei may have been desired by many, but few had their lust satisfied. Men weren’t even a blip on his sexual radar. Most women also fell short of his unvoiced standards – the existence of which he would always deny. The women who could boast of the privilege of walking down the street arm in arm with Andrei were tall and slim with graceful long legs, hair down to at least their shoulder blades, subtle makeup, and cover-girl faces. And, most importantly, they had to be sharp dressers. Age was not an issue. I’d first met him when we were both nineteen, and during the seven years of our friendship, I’d seen him hook up with girls as young as sixteen and women as old as fifty-five. All that mattered was that they have the look. Actually, that wasn’t all. Andrei possessed a probing intelligence. He read voraciously, and he expected his assembly-line lovers to be able to discuss at length the minutiae of his favourite books. Invariably, he grew bored with his women, or contemptuous if they read one of the books in his pantheon and proceeded to display the depth of their incomprehension. Rarely would he declare to the injured party that their short-lived romance was over. Instead, at the end of an affair, he’d simply vanish for several weeks without a word. Even I – his closest friend – never found out where he vanished to.
Ten years ago, Tamara had been one of those women. The last of those women.
At nineteen, I moved to Montreal from Deep River, Ontario. I wanted to learn French, to live in a cosmopolitan environment. See foreign films on the big screen. Go to operas. Museums. Concerts. Art galleries. Listen to street musicians. Hear people converse in languages I couldn’t understand.
I never did learn French. I’m often embarrassed about that. Montreal isn’t nearly as French as most outsiders think, and it’s all too easy to live exclusively in its English-language demimonde.
I’d taken a year off after high school, intending to travel, but I never did. I never had enough money, and I languished resentfully in Deep River. I applied to McGill University for the following year, was accepted, chose philosophy as my major.
In early September, less than a week after classes started, I attended a midnight screening of Haynes’s Bestial Acts at the Rialto. I’d heard so much about that film, but, of course, it had never come to Deep River, even on video. There were only two of us in the theatre. The other cinephile was a stunningly handsome guy I guessed was about my age. He was already there when I walked in, his face buried in a book, despite the dim lighting. I sat two rows ahead of him.
After the credits stopped rolling, the lights went on, and I felt a tap on my shoulder. When I turned, the handsome guy – Andrei, I would soon learn – said, “I feel like walking. Let’s go.” I had no choice but to obey; I didn’t want to have a choice. So I followed him, already ensorcelled.
We walked all over the city, and he brought me to secret places where its night-time beauty was startlingly delicate. The water fountain in the concrete park next to the Ville-Marie Expressway. The roof of a Plateau apartment building – its access always left unlocked in violation of safety regulations. We snuck into a lush private courtyard covered in ancient-looking leafy vines; the windows reflected and rereflected the moonlight to create a subtly complex tapestry of light. All the while, we talked about Bestial Acts, trying to understand it all, to pierce the veil of its mysteries.
As dawn neared, he said, “You’ve never read the original story, have you?” There was disappointment in his voice.
I felt like this was a test. I looked him straight in the eye. “No. Before seeing the ‘adapted from’ credit on the screen tonight, I didn’t even know about it.”
His face changed, and he laughed. He’d decided to forgive my ignorance. He dug out a paperback from the inside of his jacket. “Here. Read this. Let’s have lunch on Sunday, and we can talk some more.”
The book’s spine was creased from countless rereadings, the corners furled and frayed. It was a collection of stories called Ethical Treatment, and the back-cover blurb said that the author lived here in Montreal. Andrei saw my eyes grow wide; he told me, “No. I didn’t write that book. That’s not a pseudonym. I don’t even know the guy.”
So we had lunch that Sunday, and then became nearly inseparable.
As for all those women of his – well, yes, I admired their beauty; but they were unattainable, too glamorous and self-confident for me to even fantasize about. Was I jealous of them? Of the love he spent on them? No; it was abundantly clear that I was permanent, that spending time with me took precedence over his dalliances. And they were only ephemeral mirrors into which he’d gaze to see his own beauty reflected.
As I do every morning, I wake up at six. The rain is still splattering on the skylight window. Although it’s summer and sunlight should be flooding the bedroom by now, under this thick blanket of dark clouds, it’s still as dark as midnight.
I turn around and spoon Tamara. My nose rests lightly her shoulder; I breathe in her unwashed aromas. She is intoxicating. Her soft back is luxuriant against my chest. My semi-erect cock jerks lightly, probing the smoothness of her buttocks.
She moans, but she’s still hours from waking up. She rarely wakes before noon. Then, eventually, she heads out; without a word, without a goodbye kiss. Brunch with friends? Museums? The gym? Does she even have friends? I can only speculate. She always returns past eleven in the evening, and we go to bed together around midnight.
I get up. Normally, I would go jogging, but I’m too fed up with the rain.
Andrei never worked. But money never seemed to be a problem. I was curious, but I knew better than to inquire. Whatever he wanted to share, he would tell me.
Actually, it’s not fair to say that he never worked.
He wrote. He wrote for hours every day, the words pouring out of him with the relentless flow of a waterfall. He never tried to publish. He disdained the very idea of publication; nevertheless, he was supportive of my futile efforts at getting my own work into print.
He wrote poetry, fiction, philosophical ramblings, and other prose that segued from genre to genre. All of it was brilliant. Yes, I envied his way with women, but what inspired my jealousy was his prodigious literary talent. It often took me months to finish a short story, while he
would write several of them a week, in addition to countless other pieces. And he worked on a number of long Proustian novels simultaneously, each of them accumulating wordage but never seeming to reach any kind of conclusion.
We’d spend sleepless nights poring over each other’s work with a harsh and unforgiving love. We questioned every word, every comma, every idea. We revised and reread and rearranged. He was unfailingly generous with his talent and editorial acumen. His input imbued my feeble scribblings with a depth of allusion and empathy I could never have achieved on my own.
If he was aware of my jealousy, he never showed any sign of it. He considered me his only friend and let no-one but me read his work. And so my jealousy was tempered by exclusivity. Although I urged him time and again to seek publication, I secretly thrilled like a teenage girl who, magically, knew that she – and no-one else – had the privilege of sucking the cock of her favourite rock star.
Tamara and I rarely talk, rarely spend any time together, save for the nighttime in bed. Our lives are separate, save for that nightly communion. We are strangers.
Occasionally, she walks in on me, whether I’m in my study or in the living room or taking a nap, and asks, “Read to me.”
What she means is, “Read me something of Andrei’s.” And I always do. Sometimes I grab a book, sometimes an unpublished manuscript. Andrei left so much behind. She nestles into my lap and chest, and I enfold her as best I can, breathing in the heady blend of sweat, perfume, shampoo, and lotions, wishing for the weight of her body to leave permanent impressions in my flesh.
When I stop reading, we neck like teenagers, fondle each other tenderly, hungrily, with unfeigned clumsiness.
Before, she used to read voraciously. Now, all she desires of the world of literature is to hear me read Andrei’s words.
During most of my years-long friendship with Andrei, I never had a lover, never seriously pursued anyone. Andrei had awakened the writer in me, and that was all that mattered. I’d quit school. I supported myself with a string of meaningless jobs, and devoted all my spare energies to, inseparably, my writing and my friendship with Andrei.
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