Thought Forms

by Jeffrey Thomas

This room—not his still unfinished black room—was a semi-organ-ized attic-like maze of book stacks, magazine and newspaper piles, odd collectibles and props for his video movies. Ray relished having a captured audience, and spent nearly an hour pointing out his possessions to Heidi, who seemed intrigued or else convincingly tolerant.. Throughout this hour they remained standing. He pointed out his canvas sketch of the author Yukio Mishima, which had sat around unpainted for so long, and described Mishima to her, stressing Mishima’s tumultuous spirit and violent suicide. He showed her the Van Gogh-inspired self-portrait he had begun, though only some of the swirling background was painted so far.

  He let Heidi fondle his Marine combat knife with its Bowie-like blade tinted black to prevent tell-tale flashes, and his lock-blade knives, of which he had two, both of which he had to close for her since she didn’t understand the mechanisms. He produced his .38, and assuring her it was unloaded by spinning the open cylinder, handed it to her. He couldn’t always tell from her restrained or remote expression how she reacted to these things, but Ray liked to see her seeing them, holding them. As if she were fondling some intimate part of his body, masculine and hard and very tangible. Inviting her into this house, this room was like inviting her into the core of his mind, where all his thoughts and dreams were solid to the touch.

  “Are you getting a little bored with this?” he asked self-consciously.

  “No, but I’m tired of standing.”

  “Oh I’m sorry, I’m sorry—sit down.”

  Heidi sat on the bed’s edge, the springs squeaking like some mischievous elf hid under it. Ray sat beside her.

  Somehow it progressed to tickling, a familiar and trusted device.

  From there to kissing. Ray reclined and pulled her down on top of him, but it was awkward and they had to straighten. Heidi looked at him.

  “It’s your room—you make the moves.”

  Ray turned his eyes elsewhere. “Have you decided what to do with Tim’s ring?”

  A long sigh, heavy hesitance. “I’ve decided to keep it,” she admitted with a mournful, perhaps somewhat exaggeratedly mournful, tone.

  “Oh boy,” Ray sighed. “Well.” He clasped his hands, smirked and wagged his head. Of course. Of course. How could he have been so naive as to expect a woman to want to share her life and love with him? It had only been a dream.

  Heidi watched him. “I’ll leave it up to you if you want me to call my mother and tell her I’ll be late.”

  “Yeah, why not—go ahead,” Ray murmured.

  ««—»»

  His external mood lightened a good deal as they went about the pre-liminaries of abolishing his virginity. It was pointless for her to ask him if he were a virgin—it went without saying. Apparently he exuded it.

  She removed his shirt as they stood facing each other, and then he unbuttoned hers. Top forty radio droned on unheard. Jagged emotions drifted on in a surreal ice flow. Shirtless, her skin was not much darker than her bra. Ray touched her through the bra as they kissed. He fumbled behind her.

  “I don’t know if I can undo this mechanism.”

  “You’ll manage,” she said, wanting him to be the one. He sensed now, as he had before with her, that she wanted him to be more aggressive, more of an instigator than he was presently capable of. He was the virgin, though, not she.

  The caps of her bra came away and her breasts swelled free, great and heavy, maternal, with wide soft-colored aureoles and indistinct, almost nonexistent nipples. What greatly surprised him was the long, twisty hairs that grew from the aureoles. Ray knew the names of dinosaurs, Ray knew about Jung and Freud. Ray knew the names and models and weights of guns and he knew many things but he had never known that women can grow hairs from their nipples.

  He said nothing though he sensed her unrest. He stroked her breasts and squeezed them. So soft, softer and more formless than he had ever imagined—they seemed to elusively spill through his hands like smoke in two half-inflated balloons.

  “I like this one better,” he softly joked. Her right.

  “It’s bigger, that’s why,” she replied.

  He bent his head to kiss and lick them and pull her ill-defined nipples through his lips. He liked the musty or musky smell of their flesh. He kissed her mouth and relished her breasts squashing into his bare chest.

  Ray and Heidi removed their shoes, and he his socks. He slid down her pants. Her panties were oddly garish: a near fluorescent lemon yellow, and shiny. She asked him if she should retain her knee socks—“some guys like that.” Definitely, he told her, as they floated down to the bed.

  Heidi had removed her panties—and Ray was somewhat embarrassed that he had been stroking her through them only to find he’d been stroking a sanitary napkin. She was in the second day of her period, she mentioned.

  Ray touched her there, felt the coarse hair, sparse so that flesh showed through from behind. “I told you I was a natural redhead,” she cooed.

  She let him kiss her belly, and lower, and let hm nuzzle for a while, but became self-conscious apparently and told him, “Let’s see what you can do up here.” Ray crawled up to her obediently, both relieved and disappointed.

  An acquired taste, no doubt, but he had been willing to get more used to it.

  Heidi now noticed, and Ray saw her notice, that he didn’t have an erection.

  ««—»»

  It became apparent to Ray how long they had been trying to fulfill him when he began to hear a few songs repeated on the radio, songs they had heard just prior to their undressing. Four hours had gone by since Heidi had stepped into his bedroom.

  His erection had come and gone, and they had copulated, and Heidi had climaxed—to her surprise, she admitted. She had tried riding him on top, and he had asked her to roll on her belly (so as not to have to see her eyes, but she had looked nervous as if he intended to enter her elsewhere). She had complied, arching her bottom up for him, but he couldn’t even penetrate. She had had to tell him to stop trying so hard—he did not sweat easily but was literally drenched now and drenching her, to the extent that she remarked she had never seen a man sweat so heavily. Maybe she was excited and marveling, or repulsed and accusatory, or merely matter-of-fact, but Ray didn’t like it.

  She had tried cooing in his ear, “You’re the best,” and something about their hair mingling, but Ray could only chuckle at that, wanting her to stop. Absurdity. All of it—life—so transparently a comedy now, when a man couldn’t even perform his instinctive biological function.

  Though she had been compliant and exceedingly patient, never disgusted, Ray had gotten impatient with her. At one point he even asked her to put her hands on his back—he thought she wasn’t trying hard enough to guide him. Her occasional rotating hip motions didn’t satisfy him. Was she too repulsed by his slick body to wrap her legs around him like they did in movies, too repulsed to touch him? At moments he felt like he was auditioning for her. He didn’t want to be the only aggressor.

  “This is what’s nice—pillow talk. You’re gonna find that some of the best talks you can have are in bed,” Heidi whispered beside him.

  “Yeah.”

  Her finger traced in his pubic hair. She found a scar. Gingerly she asked if that were why…

  “No, it was just a hernia,” he cut her off rather disgustedly. He groaned, “It doesn’t hurt so much that I can’t have you, but I wanted at least to be able to…do this alright. Y’know?”

  “I understand. It’s your pride.” She sounded a little wounded. Ray had partly wanted that. What he had said wasn’t true—that he could easily part with her—but he was lying to himself defensively with that one. Still, it would be easier to fail at one thing than two.

  “You look like you’re going to cry,” Heidi said. “Are you?”

  “No—it’s funny…I wish I could, but I can’t. I’m so numb. ”

  “Yeah?”

  “I can’t understand it. I get erections when I don’t want them—I masturbate all the time.” Never
had that been a matter of pride before.

  “Really?” She was amusedly intrigued.

  “I have a strong sex urge. Come on, Freddie, what’s the matter with you?” He gave his penis a playful light backhand.

  Heidi smiled. “My first sex was awful. I didn’t have my first orgasm for a long time…more than a year.”

  “Yeah but—that’s different.”

  “No it isn’t. Why is that different?”

  Words didn’t satisfy him, so he gave up on them. Beside the bed stood a large plastic Tyrannosaurus Rex model Ray’s cousin Paul had given him for Christmas two years ago. In its green face the stark white eyes and giant white grin had been trained on them. To bring a bit of levity to things, Heidi reached across and twisted the head to discreetly smirk in another direction.

  Ray had asked Heidi if they could try one last time. It hadn’t worked.

  Now he joked morosely, “I could probably get it if I had four more hours.”

  “I’m sorry but I can’t stay that long.”

  It was just a joke but Ray felt guilty, as if he had wasted her time. He rolled over onto her and held her, and she held him sufficiently now. He pretended to sob in her neck. It seemed to be something she wanted—something touching and tormentedly romantic. He exploited her so that she could soothe him, but he wished that his little sobs were real.

  Finally she rolled away, and lay on her belly trying to incite him to help her find the jungle animals amongst the jungle vegetation on his pil-lowcase. Forcing patience, forcing himself not to exert himself against her body one last time, he helped her pick out a creature or two.

  He touched her body, admired it, told her it was the creamy and snow-flawless, shapely body that classical artists had immortalized for years—

  Greek sculptors, Rodin, Renoir. He had drawn it too, for years, aching for it to step out whole and real from his imagination on command. Ray felt guilty now that he had groped her roughly, positioned her like a doll and held her body captive while he tried in vain again and again to make her that imaginary catharsis (though she had told him to stop being so gentle—“I won’t break”—and she had exploited him in kind for whatever motivation she had).

  “Are you hungry?” she asked. Ray’s spirit shriveled to its least volume. It was over.

  They got up from the damp bed. Heidi joked, “I bet you’ll never change these sheets.”

  “Can I keep your panties?” he joked back bravely.

  “No.” She sounded serious. He hoped she hadn’t believed he meant it. She hid her Renoir body away from him bit by bit as it had been unveiled to him. “Well after I go tonight you can get out your dirty magazines and have fun.”

  Ray knew that Heidi was a sweet and compassionate woman—but how could as sensitive and intelligent a woman as she was make a joke so dismal and crushing? Was it meant to reassure him that his power of erection was indeed intact? That his built up steam could soon be vented free? He didn’t hate her for it, but it came across as unintentionally cruel mockery. A great way to end this tragic, pathetic—though gloomily romantic—dream.

  They rode in the night to a pizza and sub restaurant. Not facing her as they neared it, Ray said, “I’m mixed up pretty bad right now but I want you to know I appreciate your patience and…everything.”

  Heidi juste snorted a little embarrassed chuckle.

  Ray didn’t have enough money to cover her meal, to his further dismay, so she had to pay for her own. They sat, he tried to eat, couldn’t.

  Heidi told him to bring the sandwich to work tomorrow.

  “I think I’ll stay out sick tomorrow.” His eyes scanned the paper song title slips in the jukebox on their table.

  “No you won’t. I’m going in tomorrow and you will too.”

  They chatted, Ray composing himself well, as if he had never seen this human, this woman, naked, or battled himself so luridly before her eyes. Mostly Heidi talked of her few girlfriends. They finished up and Heidi drove Ray back to his secluded home.

  In the driveway they sat in her car. Heidi seemed to study him and smiled. There was real warmth in it. “I can almost say I love you,” her dream voice sighed.

  Ray’s defense mechanism kicked in again. He didn’t love this girl—he didn’t know her. He only wanted a girl. He didn’t love this one. He was just disappointed with his disloyal body.

  “I don’t know what I feel,” he mumbled. He cracked the door.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she stressed.

  “Yeah—maybe.” He left the car without moving toward her for a goodbye kiss, taking his uneaten sandwich with him.

  After she had gone, Ray took Kelly out on a leash for a walk along his dark-forested road and cried.

  And he didn’t masturbate that night.

  ««—»»

  Ray’s dream got a little better for a while.

  At work the next day Ray and Heidi exchanged a few words at the start of the morning. Ray’s mood was composed, even a little jovial—in a chilly, defensive way. He told Heidi that he wasn’t so worried now about what had happened, since he had remembered that the same problem had befallen his cousin Paul the first time he tried to make love to his girlfriend—who had since gone off to college and out of his life.

  But for the rest of the day Ray was left too alone at his machine stamping holes in the cattle hides, their reddish dye coming off on his hands. His mind was left too free to dwell on the embarrassing horror of last night. Masochistically he replayed images and sensations so clear it was like truly reliving them. He remembered being pleasantly surprised at how comfortable he felt so starkly naked before another person. (But he had held in his belly when standing. And sitting beside her, he had self-consciously pointed out how his legs were broken out with pimples.

  “Mm,” she had grunted blandly, maybe dismissively.) He remembered how, sitting beside her, feeling her thigh, he had felt prickly stubble and said with mock disgust, “If I wanted hairy legs I’d make love to a man,”

  to which she had self-consciously replied that she only shaved from the knees down, and he had told her it was alright—he liked it. It was human, it made her more real.

  He had flinched from her touching his stomach and upper thighs—

  violently flinched as if cattle-prodded or branded—and had laughed with fearful awe at his uncontrollable response.

  “I’ve never seen a man with blond body hair,” she had marveled, the hairs on him glowing golden and delicate. He had felt proud, exotic.

  But he had felt a great inferiority in this universe when she had resorted to oral sex to stimulate him. He could see her face vividly now, her eyes on him watching his naked despair and ineffectiveness, her eyes never leaving his as she delicately tongued the eye of his glans. It hadn’t helped much and she hadn’t taken it into her mouth to pursue this avenue more thoroughly. Ray doubted it would have transformed things anyway.

  Her tongue was trying to excite him but those eyes kept scaring him away.

  Ultimately he had tried rubbing himself against her leg while lying half on her…humping her leg like a dog. It was like rubbing two wet sticks together to make a fire.

  Like a dog. Humping her leg like a dog…

  “Oh God,” Ray sighed to himself at his machine, glancing toward her, his throat clenching. She glanced back at him with that strange blank and shielded expression. But Ray did sense some kind of pain or concern behind the big glasses and composed mouth.

  As promised, the day did get better.

  They ate lunch in her car in the parking lot—he was glad not in his, because he thought it smelled inside. They barely spoke, mostly listened to each other munch, but it was something. When lunch was almost over Ray finally summoned up the nerve to ask, “Would you be interested in going to a nice platonic movie or something tonight?”

  “Platonic,” she echoed with an ironic smile.

  Well, she hadn’t chosen him for a romantic relationship, had she?

  Unless you considered
sex—or half sex—romantic. He waited.

  “Alright, but we’ll have to go from my house because I have to feed my dog and call Tim tonight. So we can stop off at your house first and get a change of clothes.”

  She said this so calmly, nonchalantly. Ray smiled gingerly inside.

  His car led them to his home, and she waited in the drive while he bolted inside to gather some clothing in a brown paper bag and pour Kelly a hasty early dinner. He took her out on the line for a few minutes before letting her go in to munch it down. She was too excited about her chow to notice Ray get into Heidi’s car outside and leave her. Ray had forgotten to leave a light on for her. He wouldn’t be here tonight to console her when she barked, eyes wide, at the rustling sounds outside the window screens, or when her ears perked when the telephone rang only once several times, or when the floorboards in the vacant run-down apartment upstairs creaked in ominous succession as if some restless sleepwalker paced.

  ««—»»

  It was a long ride to Heidi’s town, mostly by highway, and again they barely spoke. Ray found himself nearly paralyzed mentally. As they reached Heidi’s hometown, however, she began pointing out places of interest, schools she’d attended. They turned into her street, stole up to her house, and Ray found himself filled with anxiousness and dread.

  Heidi exuded concern that some family member would be home, and crept into the house as if finding her family home would be like finding their mangled murdered bodies. When she relaxed he relaxed. Her mother and a sister were staying overnight somewhere, a brother was elsewhere, and it wasn’t made clear where the father was but Ray didn’t pursue it. He sensed that was a delicate topic—there wasn’t much of a man’s presence in the house, he would soon note. In any case, at first Ray believed these overnight absences were all a clever manipulation on Heidi’s part with her mother as accomplice, but later he would find it was all just a weirdly favorable coincidence somewhat reminiscent of Divine Providence.

  Heidi conducted a prideful tour of the house, which was large and expensive and filled with expensive things, brimming so much with the belongings and material wealth it boasted that it was to Ray cluttered and claustrophobic. Heidi let Ray peek into her sister’s and brother’s rooms, bragging about their accomplishments. She saved her bedroom, which she shared with another sister (Ray couldn’t keep track of her siblings) for later. In the vast yard out back he walked her playful dog on a leash for her while she strolled beside him.