American Goth (16 page)

She shook her head again. “You
just
got this—it’s gonna get wrecked,” she said, protesting even as she let me settle it on her.

“It looks better on you, anyway,” I told her honestly and when her eyes met mine, some of the warmth had returned, as did just the slightest touch of our connection. I brushed my thumb against her cheek. “This is bugging you, huh?” I asked softly.

Her lips tightened a moment. I didn’t understand why, but I didn’t have to—it was more important to me that she feel all right—and I squeezed her shoulder briefly as we walked back through the store and out into the rain.

Both the thunder and the lightning had settled even as I made sure to raise my collar about my neck and we sloshed our way across the street. I let Fran walk ahead of me for a bit and tried to read what I could from her posture: shoulders and head gathered because of the rain, a bag tucked under her arm and her hands shoved deep into the pockets of the wool coat that did an admirable job of letting the water bead off and run down.

Finally, she stopped and waited for me on the corner, and she let me take her arm. I tucked her hand into my pocket for warmth as we walked on in silence through the downpour until we reached the corner of Dean.

“You know, my parents, they’re not happy that I’m gay,” she said finally, turning the same dark eyes she’d had in the store on me.

My father once told me he didn’t care who I dated, so long as I chose a decent person. He’d emphasized the genderless “person” and “decent”; he knew, and he,
we
, were fine. Fran, other than what she had shared recently, had never before discussed her experience with her parents so I simply listened and let her continue. “My dad, he said, ‘Well, at least you’re normal looking, you’re not one of
those
kinds of dykes.’”

“What do you mean?” I asked her as I pulled the keys from my pocket and fit them to the lock. I opened the door and waved her in before me. The cold of the wet had gone bone deep and made me shiver as we took off our coats to hang them on the hooks, there just for that purpose. I caught her eyes as I eased one of my boots off. “What’s one of ‘those’ kinds of dykes?” Water dripped in fits and starts from my coat onto the mat over the well-preserved tile.

“You know what I mean,” she answered and shrugged, “the whole ‘want to be a man’ thing, the penis obsession, all of that.”

I stared at her in shock—did she really feel, think that way? Now, I’d spent a lot of my free time before she’d arrived with Graham, Hannah, and Kenny, and there were a few things I’d come to understand: Kenny was bisexual, he made no bones about it, and neither did anyone else. “Pretty” was more or less good enough for him, and since he declaimed, loudly and proudly, “I’m not getting’ soddin’ married,” he paid attention to condoms and that was about it.

Hannah was, as she liked to say, “your garden variety dyke,” which I supposed meant that she was a lot into girls, a little into sports, and left it at that. She’d recently cut her hair to match the current popular look: short back and sides, long on top.

All things considered, it was honestly a little hard to tell the boys from the girls just from a quick glance. Even Graham barely edged over to the “guy” side, and it was mostly because of the hats he occasionally wore, as well as the almost-forties-style clothes he preferred as a ska man and Rude Boy, with the sharp suit jackets and super thin ties, though he did every now and again sport the shadow scrub that so many of the guys favored.

But the point was that there had been more than one occasion during rehearsals where a conversation evolved, or devolved, into a comparison of dick size and use, and the impression I’d been left with was that it wasn’t about the dick so much (well, not all the time, anyway) as it was about sex, its enjoyment, and occasionally, the expression of something that maybe couldn’t be expressed another way.

And…I had my own curiosities about, well, everything. But still, I said nothing as I closed the door.

“My mother, of course, is very grateful I don’t ‘look’ that way.”

I kicked off my other boot, all the while very aware of the raw rub of my jeans on my thighs, the harsh scrape of the seams, the chill that had set into the skin of my neck. I made sure my boots were set properly below my coat in such a way they wouldn’t be dripped on or in. Done and set, I took a breath before I faced her, my friend, my lover, and the strange disconnect that had grown between me and the world, between us. If that was really how she felt, she wasn’t going to like what I had planned.

“Fran,” I said finally, “I think it doesn’t matter what you look like. People, your parents, they’re still gonna judge you, still gonna criticize. And you know what? If that’s what you think, if that’s how you feel, it’s gonna be harder for you—because you look like one of
them
, and wait till they find out you’re not.”

Her face worked a moment as she stared back at me. “Hey,” she said softly and reached for my shoulder. “I didn’t, I mean, I wasn’t trying to offend you.”

I shrugged away and turned to the stairs, but she caught my chin in her hand. Bound as we were, connected as we were even if I couldn’t feel it at the moment, perhaps she still did. “Sammy, did I hurt your feelings?”

“Ann,” I corrected stonily, my mind churning, hurt, in ways I couldn’t describe, dismayed at the chasm that yawned between us, “and I’m fine.” I tossed my head free of her grasp. “We both have work to do after dinner, we shouldn’t be late.” I went up the stairs, and Fran followed moments later.

*

“The Mid-Astral is a center,
a nexus, to the other plains. We exist, are manifest, in the Material, while the Tanglewoods border the Elemental Plain where live the kings and queens of Fire, Earth, Water, and Air,” he explained as they jogged across the broad field toward the trees. “This, your form as you see it, your simulacrum, is a projection of how you see yourself, but look closely,” he said, and pointed to her waist, then to his. “Do you see that?”

She did. A faint white light, a rope, that led from navel to… She peered carefully through and shifted her awareness.

“It’s your tie to your life, to your body,” he said. “It can stretch, bend, go through, go as far as you can ever possibly need it to, but now you must know this: it can be severed, and that severing will end your physical life.”

She nodded, unsurprised by the knowledge.

“This…this is why this work must happen with a monitor, at least during this stage,” he continued. “You can guard your aethyric self, but who will guard the body?”

“But…if you’re here with me now, then who does that?” she asked, confused.

He smiled at her, then pointed to the almost indiscernible ring of light that glowed through the trees in the first copse they approached. This was the next step in their journey. “I do,” he answered, “and the warding circle that was built before we started. I can hold my awareness in both places simultaneously. You’ll be able to as well, after the Rite, after you’ve been consecrated to the Light. And then you’ll have full control of your abilities. But first, for now,” he said, and he took her hand in his as they stood before the glow, “you must meet the Lords of the Elements.”

She stepped through the portal with him.

*

I barely remember the shower I took before I went to bed, earlier than Fran for once, and after pulling on a T-shirt to guard against the morning cold, I collapsed on the mattress, embracing my pillow as my head reeled with the import of what had happened this night.

I had come out of the trance with the directive and the ability to hold the deeper vision, to see the underlying energy structure of the Material. I had seen for myself the salamanders that danced in the fire, the undines that sang in the smallest drop of water, the gnomes whose very steps could shake the earth, and the sylphs of air. The shock of feeling that tiny hand on my face, of witnessing a curtain shift, then flap with definite gusty enthusiasm in an airless room after a polite and carefully phrased invitation… It wasn’t that I had anything resembling control of the elements, it was merely that they responded to my well-worded request, and
that
had me wondering for my sanity.

I let the disjointed thoughts roll through my mind. As I mastered my weapon and the bass, both seemed to respond not only to my hands but almost to my thoughts, my
intent
, actions completed almost before they’d been fully considered, a swing, a block, a strike, already in motion before I was fully aware of it. Notes fretted and sounding through the air that were the perfect blend, the bridge that walked between melody and rhythm, a driving counterpoint of its own that gave the music its muscle, the blood and the breath beneath the surface that made it live, forced its way through the air and into Hannah, who’d lock into a sync with me that would take the drive, double it, send it out, where Graham would pick it up, dig in, and pass it on to Kenny, who’d sing and sway with reinforced enthusiasm, even if he didn’t always play guitar perfectly. The balance of parts perfect, a fusion of elements into something vibrant, vital…

Oh but those Lords, the Kings of the Elements… I shivered as I hugged the pillow closer to my face. They’d presented as pillars of pure force, of intellect, of power and knowledge, of experience not even remotely human, Material, incarnate—they never had been or would be. They spoke in image, in emotion, and made me more aware than ever that I
was
human, I was frail, I was mortal, and very, very ignorant of the reality of the world that surrounded us all.

How petty and so very small it all seemed, the discomfort of rain, the ache of the physical, lust, want, greed, when there were forces that ran through the very structure of Universe,
were
its very makeup, and our understanding and harmony with it was so limited.

Such were my thoughts as I fell asleep, a combination of the images and messages I’d gleaned over the muscle ache brought on by the physical workout and its accompanying lecture on the manifestations of intention and forces into the forms of deities. Some deities were thought-forms, the collection of projected energy sent by worshippers until a godhead was…
created
…by what amounted to group wishful thinking; while others, like the Elemental Lords, were actual entities with true presences. The shocks of above, below, and within all rolled and roiled with the extra energy through my body.

I awoke to feel the sensual stirring of Fran against my back, and as her fingers skimmed my T-shirt up, her body warmed the skin she bared. Her legs made my skin feel alive where they caressed mine.

The feel, the warm, satin weight of her pressed along my spine, the sensual drawl in my ear, and the breath that blew on my shoulder created a perfectly satisfying, satiating intensity, and strangely enough a safe zone of sensation.

“God, you’ve got the most amazing ass,” she murmured as she laid a line of kisses across my shoulders and ground against me. Her hands clutched firmly at my hips and pulled me closer to her.

I wasn’t even close to fully awake, but I was definitely aroused, suffused with a sleepy sensuality that hummed through me. The disconnect that had existed between us earlier was gone, replaced by a wave of pure incandescence and the energies the work had stirred that flowed from her, mixed with a desire so palpably for me and for the body she eased against that I couldn’t stop the sound that came from my mouth or the lift of my hips that brought her into closer contact where I needed her.

Her hands, her body, left mine for a moment only to reconnect with hot, wet demand that made me gasp, and her fingers trailed along my back, my sides, to reach around and cup my breasts before she tweaked the hardened points in her hands.

“I love the way this feels…you feel,” she said, her voice a harsh whisper on my spine before she kissed it. “You like it?”

Whatever I might have wanted to say became a choked groan of her name, because the slick feel of her pressed to my cunt robbed me of air, while the fingers that shifted from tits to slip along my folds took me away from thought of anything other than Fran and what she was doing to my body. Yes—I liked it, a lot.

“Or do you want a cock inside you, filling you?” she asked in the same throaty tone. “I can just feel your cunt on me, pulling at me. Or would you rather,” and she spread me apart and began to tug on my hard-on, slowly, deliberately, firmly, forcing me still between the combined sensations she drove into me, “would you rather do that to me?”

“God…Fran…” I managed to croak out, shocked at her words especially considering our earlier discussion, shocked further still at how vivid the images those words created, because I could see it, I could
feel
it, and I covered her hand with mine, the hand that worked my clit so fucking good, as the pressure changed from the buildup of steady and slow to the frantic please-make-me-come stroke that made me throb beneath her.

“I can come like this,” she said in a fevered breath along my back. “I’m gonna come like this, with my cunt against yours all slick and hot.”

“God…yes!” I sobbed into the pillow that prevented me from smashing my head into the wall, one hand partially knotted and tangled into the T-shirt we’d somehow managed to get mostly off, wanting nothing more than to feel her do just that, because she was taking me with her. The wet grind, the strong slip of her fingers, the heat against my back, and I was, God, so close and she was…
please
… The link, the connect, was absolute as I felt the power gather within her, sluice through me, ohmygod we were going to come together and I was…she was…there, right
there
…