Bound by Lust (17 page)

“You worried about your face?” Cade asked.

“I don't know.”

“They could get excited and knock the shit out of you.”

“I guess I'm a little worried.”

“I'll tell them not to hit the pretty boy in the face.” Cade winked.

“Okay. Think I could end up in the hospital?” I'd started to sweat, then I twitched.

“I'll keep an eye on you, Ronan.”

“Has anyone died here before?”

Cade shook his head. “Course not, dude.”

Twitch. “I like pain,” I said. “I just wanted to know.” I lifted my arm to wipe my brow. Suddenly I fantasized a tall, meaty faggot slugging me in the stomach before closing his hands around my neck. I saw the fire in his eyes. I saw stars and then white light before it went red. Maybe that was what it was like when you hung yourself with a belt in your bedroom.

I sort of felt sick.

“Hey, Ronan.” Cade eyeballed me. “I don't allow any simulated snuff shit. Got it?”

I cleared my head. “Yeah, thanks.” I smiled then grabbed a broom.

“Make sure you get that spot in front of the floggers display,” Cade said.

 

I was fourteen when I stood at a mirror in the bathroom I shared with my brother and didn't have a shirt on; I wore only my underwear. My reflection was narrow and white. I had sleep in my eyes; my hair stood on end. I'd just woke from another dream where somebody slugged me. The radio stood silent on the counter beside the sink. My brother had arranged his razor and shaving cream, a bottle of Tommy Hilfiger cologne, and a tub of hair gel beside the radio. My stuff remained shoved in a cupboard beneath the sink. To the left of my ribcage, a sore spot. Another bruise blossomed against the canvas of my skin. Just me and my inferiority complex there.

 

“I hate my father,” Marcelle told me one evening. I wore boxer shorts and a Mr. Happy T-shirt my mom had bought me at Target two years before. I knelt on a throw rug on the living room floor. Marcelle wore a pink and blue nightie. She stopped dancing circles around me to observe my upturned face from above. I wanted to hug her around the legs.

“Why do you hate your father?” I asked.

Marcelle parted my lips with her fingers. She slid two fingers into my mouth. “Suck my cock,” she said.

My brother had teased me about the T-shirt. “Mr. Happy?” he'd said. “That's hilarious, you fucking crybaby, Ro-Ro the Twitch.”

As usual, I'd stared at the ground and blinked it back and twitched.

“You'll never get girls like that,” he'd said.

“Mom got me the T-shirt. It's just a shirt.”

“It's gay,” my brother had said.

Whenever I went to his soccer games, I'd flinch when he kicked the ball down the field; I'd marvel at his agility and prowess: I'd sit in the bleachers and give way to the sun and melt.

“That's good,” Marcelle said to me with her fingers in my mouth. “Make me happy.”

 

Marcelle said the reason she liked her job in the lingerie shop was the old men who tipped her to model the merchandise. Every morning she got into her uniform: a white dress and sandals. She put on lipstick and parted her hair in the middle. The dress was transparent. I saw a silhouette of her legs behind the material. Marcelle wore flower-printed underwear.

“I never give them more than a show,” she said one morning.

“They're desperate though; they try. I mean, they want control, don't they?” Marcelle looked at me as I knelt on the floor.

“Yeah,” I said, and it scared me a little, some old guy getting the best of her.

“I like to be mean,” she said.

I shivered.

“People like you are stronger than people like me.”

I touched the back of her knee at the hem of her dress. I shook my head.

“Think about it,” she said. “Who's stronger? The sadist or the masochist?”

I wanted her to be stronger. That was obvious. I twitched touching her knee again.

Marcelle went to the toilet, lifted her dress, and then crouched above the bowl before releasing her bladder. I listened to the patter of her piss against the water. I imagined it neon-yellow
in the bowl. The scent of her ammonia was faint but acidic. I wanted to press my nose to her crotch and inhale it. Marcelle dropped the tissue in the bowl then flushed it. She stepped over me to leave the bathroom. I followed behind. Foggy sunlight illuminated her at the front door. The air smelled like rain behind her. I panicked.

“Aren't you going to cuff me to the table today?”

“You're not working?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Marcelle thought a moment. “Be good. Why don't you clean the house?”

“Okay.” I twitched.

Marcelle waved from the sidewalk.

“I love you,” I called to her. She walked away. I twitched. After a moment, I crawled to the front door and shut it. Left to my own devices, what would I do? Well, clean the house first. Then call Cade maybe. “Want me to come in a few hours?” I sat on my haunches.
Who's stronger? The sadist or the masochist?
I wanted to run after Marcelle.
Tell me what you mean.

I closed my eyes. I saw myself at the porn shop. I saw a handsome faggot knocking me around. Last week, a guy had removed his belt, then hit me in the head with it. Hurt. I'd come home and told Marcelle about it. She'd asked me to describe the scene over and over while she used a vibrator. I was with her in the bed but couldn't see anything but her bare calves and knees and her arm that led to her hand holding the vibrator to her cunt under her nightgown.

I'd gotten hard and embellished the story each time I told it. The handsome faggot said I looked like a girl. The handsome faggot hit me in the side of the head more than once. The handsome faggot pissed in a corner then told me to kneel in it.

“Oh,” was all Marcelle had said before she'd shuddered,
then sagged against me and drifted off to sleep.

My humility brought us both peace.

I'd taken her vibrator and held it to my nose, then licked the oily stain of her cunt.

I'd jerked off imagining a garden of bruises flowering across my gut.

I'd fallen asleep remembering the handsome faggot, what he'd said to me in secret. “Know why I don't admit I'm a faggot? Cuz I'm macho shit. Who'd let me play football then? They'd expect it of you, of course, but look at me: I'm macho shit. Know what it's like to be the macho shit, honey? Terrible. That's what it is.”

 

After Marcelle left for work that morning, I went to the turntable and put on the Germs, then regarded the spinning vinyl like something I'd thought gone forever was back from the dead.

I caught my brother once sitting on the edge of the bathtub naked and holding his foot in his lap. His legs were muscular, sinewy, and covered with short blond hairs. He said, “Look at this.” Broken blood vessels snaked the inside of his foot. His toes were misshapen, his ankle bruised. “I hate soccer,” he said.

“Why do you do it then?” I regretted the question soon as it was out of my mouth.

I started to twitch.

My brother stood off the tub, all tan shoulders and hands; his cock swung from a bird's nest of pubic hair. His eyes flashed as he grabbed my hair.

“Wait, shit, ouch!”

I fell when he yanked the strands from my scalp. I cowered beneath him.

“Why do you do it?” he repeated. “Why do you do it then?”

Marcelle came home from work and stripped in front of me, then tossed her underwear at the floor. “Put them on,” she said. I stared a moment at the ripple of fabric on the throw rug. I hadn't told her yet. Marcelle put on a pants suit. She looked at me, waiting. “Well?”

I crawled toward the panties, twitching.

 

We walked east up Hawthorne Boulevard. I wore a pink skirt with a ruffle and flower-printed underwear, my tennis shoes with no socks. My T-shirt said, “Mr. Happy.” Same one. Marcelle walked with her arm looped through mine. Hardly anyone looked at us. She took the lead. I felt giddy, like we were walking naked down the street. I was naked. Look at me!

Ahead Marcelle saw a pair of glasses on the sidewalk, abandoned or lost or something. She stooped to pick them up then put them on her face, perched on her nose. The lenses made her eyes appear three times larger than normal.

“Everything's magnified,” she said. Marcelle looked through the glasses. She looked adorable like that. “Isn't it weird, the closer things are, the harder it is to make things out?” Marcelle looked past me. “Is that a tree over there?”

“Yeah.”

“Take me.”

“Really?”

“Let's go.”

I studied her a moment. Her expression was cool. “Now,” she said. Her mouth twitched in one corner. I took her arm, felt a short line of hairs beneath her elbow. I led her toward the tree through the people; she followed without wavering, like she trusted me.

“You could walk me right into a manhole,” she said.

“I wouldn't.” My skirt swung against my legs. I liked the ruffle.

“Because you're not mean,” Marcelle said. She moved her hand up my arm. She held me.

“You're not mean either.”

“Yeah, I am. I pushed you into the street once.”

“You measured it,” I said. “You knew how close the car was.”

“Maybe.”

I turned and looked at her. “I love you,” I said.

Marcelle blinked at me through the glasses. “You do, don't you?”

“Yeah.”

At the tree, Marcelle put the glasses on me. Glorious smudge.

Marcelle straightened my skirt. “So sexy.”

“Thanks.” Giddy again. For a second, I stared into the sun. Marcelle instructed me to turn and face the tree. She said to wrap my arms around it. I held the tree. Marcelle patted my ass.

“Guess what I have?”

“What?” My cock twitched.

“A dildo.”

“Really?” My cock went hard.

“I'm going to lift the back of your skirt,” she said. “Then lube you.”

“Okay.” I hugged the tree. Traffic went by in the street. Marcelle ran her hand across my ass under the skirt. She pressed her finger between my ass cheeks, then found my hole. She lubed me up. The sensation was incredible. I quivered inside the skirt.

“Can I jerk off?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Marcelle pushed the head of the dildo at my asshole. “The
man who lets me fuck him is the man for me.” Her breath tickled my ear. We were going to do this. She'd do this for me. Marcelle pushed the dildo deeper. I felt my ass open. The dildo filled me. Cars went by. People passed on the sidewalk. My cock throbbed. She fucked me. I hugged the tree and stared up at the leaves, how they'd become one glorious garden green. She found my prostate. Oh Jesus.

“What do you see?” she asked. “Look.”

Fuck. Give me a minute. I saw how nobody looked at us. Impossible. We were invisible, no magical, on another plane. Marcelle hit my prostate again. “What do you see?”

I caught my breath, not twitching. “You love me,” I said.

 

Every Friday night she watched this show,
Supernatural
. Two brothers, Sam and Dean, fought evil. The evil things could not defeat them. They were strong; they were bound by blood.

“Love between brothers is holy,” Marcelle said. “That bond sticks.”

I didn't look at her. I stared at the floor and twitched.

“Ronan?”

Soon enough, I crawled to her. “I killed my brother,” I said.

 

He used to stare at me across the dinner table, a round table with a glass top smudged by fingerprints, the ones I pressed into existence rather than hold my fork or eat. I wasn't hungry for the stuff on my plate. I looked between my parents while Dad went on and on about Aiden, my boy, my son, and he'd project this joy around the table that circled like a hawk before landing on my mom. She'd smile and say, “We're so proud of you. You'll get the
gold
.” My stomach kicked up bile: I tasted a ball of it on the playing field of my tongue. My dad's joy took flight again, then reached my brother and settled on his shoulder; it dug in
its claws as he stared at me. I decided to keep his secrets for revenge.
He hates soccer. He does it to please you. He's afraid to be less than great.
Amazing. My brother had been so fragile.

 

Marcelle held me around my head. I pressed my face to her stomach. A piece of her dress stuck to my mouth. Tears drowned my eyes, snot clogged my nose. I was wracked by guilt.