Maidenhead (16 page)

People started to talk to each other, stand up. Chris raised his hand and in a second everyone was quiet. ‘Our newest members, Jen and Charlene, will be making us a meal of sprouted buckwheat burritos,’ Chris said. ‘Myra, perhaps you should go help them out if you don’t want to be a part of our teach-in.’

Everyone looked at me. ‘I wouldn’t eat what they made,’ I said.

Lee guffawed. I didn’t care what anyone thought. I just wanted to leave and get to Elijah.

Chris looked amused. ‘Break, please, everyone. We’ll reconvene after grub. Jen and Charlene, you have my apologies. Myra, wait here.’

Everyone left the little room. Aaron kissed me on the cheek as he left, but it was cold. I knew that he was angry with me. Chris held my essay, which was only four pages. He motioned for me to come over to get it. His arms were thin and bulging with veins.

‘Sit down, please, Myra,’ Chris said when we were alone. He passed me his joint.

‘Yes, sir?’ I said, cross-legged in front of him, looking up. I held his green eyes as I sucked in my smoke. It tasted weird, like poppy seeds. It was easy to blow light and upward in a perfect curled line.

‘Are you trying to make us laugh or cry in this paper of yours?’

It was as if an arrow shot me in the side. ‘Both,’ I said.

I was dripping now like his T-shirt, the map of the world. I slid around on the floor so he could see up my skirt.

Chris took a moment. ‘See, you’re titillating, Myra, if you really need to know that. Which I don’t think you do. I think you already know that about yourself.’

Lee touched me on the shoulder. ‘Aaron’s waiting for us in the car,’ she whispered.

‘I don’t care,’ I said.

‘We gotta go, c’mon, My.’

‘Me and My were just talking.’

‘Myra,’ I said.

‘Me and Myra were just talking about what a
titillating asshole
she is.’

‘Oh fuck,’ Lee said as she reached down for my hand.

I looked up at Lee backwards. Her neck was lifted and long like a swan’s.

‘It’s okay. He’s right. Chris was just telling me that I’m tight. He’s the second guy to say that to me ... ’

‘Let’s go, Myra,’ Lee said. She crouched down and hooked me.

‘An asshole is tight, it doesn’t dilate naturally,’ Chris said. He was amused by how much his drug had me crippled. It was hard for us to coordinate, Lee had to help me stand.

‘Everything is tight on me,’ I said, smiling. ‘Maybe you should try and feel that sometime.’

I started to gain clarity. Hairs prickled up on my arms. Jen and Charlene were in the kitchen. They were like my innermost core. I was rebelling against the fucking passivity and privilege and girlishness that was epitomized by them.

‘Come back when you’re ready, when you’re whole,’ Chris said. ‘I’ll feel you, Myra, no problem at all.’

‘You’ll feel my tight pussy?’

‘Oh god,’ said Lee.

‘No one will experience your brain unless you learn how to listen to people,’ Chris said. ‘How to even respect your enemies.’

I hadn’t wanted anyone to read my essay until I was done.

‘My enemies are fucking dependent on me,’ I said.

Lee pulled me away from Chris, through the dark hallway and the flickering front room. It felt like a roller-coaster ride. I was laughing. Inside my mouth was the black seedy stink of that joint. Outside, Wils was standing at the car. Aaron was a ghost of smoke in the driver’s seat. What I really wanted was to sit in the back seat with Lee. I wanted her to put her arm around me and let me lay my head on her shoulder in the speed. I wanted to fall and fall asleep. The titillating asshole was totally spent.

GAYL: This girl,
damn
. She needs me, she needs me!

LEE: I was trying to take care of her too.

GAYL: Hand her over. She needs real-life. No more of these half-assed, drippy, aborted explorations.

LEE: Aborted? I don’t think that friendship and empathy are aborted explorations. Neither is anarchy. It’s all a process. You’re harsh.

GAYL: Yeah, I’m not into process. I’m from Kentucky. We do washboard justice. Just hand her over. You’ll see what I see.

§

Elijah came towards me through the darkness of the bathroom. This was our place to find each other while Gayl was in the other room wrapped up in sheets. Elijah’s white robe was a heap on the floor. My hands were tied behind my back with a towel. I was sucking his cock without limbs. I started feeling like my head was my whole self.

‘You’re such a good cocksucker,’ Elijah said.

The two of us were psychic, master and slave. Only the master knows what the slave really wants, no matter how many times she runs away.

There was a ribbon of light from the slit in the door. Elijah grabbed on to the back of my head. He went so deep inside me I started to choke. I tried to turn my cheek to his stomach. My sucking stopped. I couldn’t breathe. Elijah was moaning going in me and speeding up my name. When I forced my mouth off him I felt her there, right at the door.

‘Don’t be scared,’ said Elijah, turning me back to him. ‘You don’t need to be scared.’

Was I scared? I wasn’t fucking scared! I let him go back in my mouth. I wanted my wrists tied even tighter, I wanted them tied properly, tied with leather, proper with rope. Then I would open myself more instead of going titillating tight. It’s true that only an asshole is tight.

‘You’re a princess,’ Elijah whispered as I sucked for him. He held me up by my hair. ‘Exactly like this on your knees. A princess warrior bitch.’

Sweat rose from my back like a carpet alive, it dripped from my armpits, it fired my scalp. In my mouth he was as hard as a rail. My mouth sucked him perfect and my cunt lit up. My mouth and my cunt were completely connected. I could implode and come and come and come.

Elijah’s cock shook, then he pulled out and left me completely.

A burning-hot raindrop hit my eye.

His whole body vibrated; both his hands were on his heart. There was pain in my eye, blinding tears. I used his robe to wipe my face.

According to Hegel, the slave fully acknowledges the self-consciousness of the master and she dissolves herself or upholds herself as their relationship dictates and evolves to the struggle unto death. Although this struggle is a failure, according to Hegel, if someone actually dies.

I started laughing. I didn’t know why but I felt good.

Elijah hugged me into himself. Curls of his hair down there stuck to my cheeks.

‘You’re such a good cocksucker,’ Elijah said.

I squeezed my eyes shut. The burning didn’t leave.

I felt his cock heavy, hanging down at my neck. It seemed like a necklace, a part of my body; for a second, I thought it was mine.

‘You can have it,’ Elijah said.

I was in a struggle unto death. His cock was my new talisman.

§

The ravine expanded through my tears. My mother missed my birthday. I turned seventeen. My father had ordered an ice-cream cake and sunk eighteen rainbow candles in it. Being eighteen is freedom. It felt like my mother would never be a mother again.

‘Your dad’s worried about you, Myra. He told me that sometimes you don’t come home at night.’

‘Just give me a minute.’

I didn’t want to be crying anymore. I didn’t want my father talking to Lee while I was pissing either.

‘You’re sensitive,’ Lee whispered. ‘It’s so tender, Myra. Come on, it’s really tender. It’s so tender it could kill someone.’

I dug in my fingers to the roots of the grass.

‘Your mother knows you’re sensitive too.’

I cried then, a lot. I thought it had stopped but it hadn’t. I felt it on my cheeks, in my throat and deep inside my stomach. I felt like such a female. As if this kind of pain were the wobbling, howling essence of that.

‘Don’t talk to my dad anymore about anything,’ I got out. ‘I don’t want him to know what I’m doing. He’s going to tell Jody and Jody’ll tell my mom and I don’t want my mother to know fucking anything about me!’

‘Okay, Myra. I’m sorry. I won’t. I didn’t tell him anything. I’ll tell him that I can’t talk about you if he brings it up. He’s just worried, though. Parents get worried. It makes sense.’

Lee didn’t know that I’d been with Elijah last night, that if I’d died from our master-slave psychic sex, I would’ve died satisfied.

‘I’m just fucked up,’ I said. I started ripping up grass.

‘Fucked up about Elijah or your mother?’ Lee asked.

I had nothing to say. I wanted sublation.

‘Fuck, Myra! You have to be clearer about this! Are you afraid of that guy? Is he hurting you?’

‘No.
No.
It’s just, masochism, I think.’

Lee lit up a joint. ‘Masochism,’ she said. ‘Right.’

Masochism seemed to make sense to me in terms of the struggle for self-consciousness of the slave in the struggle unto death.

‘I feel like sex, I mean giving myself, helps me. Giving my whole self to someone until I forget who I am helps me deal with my problems.’

Lee started laughing. Her laughing made me laugh. ‘Sex like that doesn’t deal with your problems, it compounds them, you sneaky little shit. It builds on top of the problems you already have!’

It felt good to go straight from crying to laughing. I smeared grass on my jeans.

‘Listen, I should tell you something,’ Lee said. The whipping night wind blew leaves around us. ‘I was molested when I was a kid. That’s why I’m so virulent about things.’

‘Oh.’

‘Sex. I mean, I’m virulent about sex. About the power dynamics.’

‘Okay ... ’

We stared at each other. Lee didn’t move from my gaze, my gaze moved first.

‘It was my teacher in Grade 6. I was twelve. She had a crush.’

‘You mean a woman molested you?’

‘Yeah. You shouldn’t be so surprised.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry. Fuck. I don’t know if I can tell you about this now.’

‘I’m sorry, really.’

‘I’m not like your old friends, you know, Myra.’

‘I know.’

‘Jen and Charlene are toxic and naive.’

‘I know! You’re totally right, they are. Lee, come on.’

‘I’m not going accept your naïveté like they did, Myra.’

‘Okay, I know.’

‘You know what?’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘What do I mean?’

‘Jen and Charlene are toxic and naive but they act like they’re not. I’ve been influenced by them. I’ve been naive. I don’t think about things always.’

‘Yeah. You don’t. You have to work on actually thinking about other people. Other people have a different life from you, Myra. Different pasts, different thoughts. Different ways of fucking managing things. It’s frustrating to me, Myra. You’re not conscious of that.’

‘Okay. I’m sorry.’

‘Stop saying you’re sorry.’

‘Please. Lee. Please tell me what happened to you,’ I said quietly. ‘I want to know.’

Lee wasn’t looking at me. Her breathing was loud. She’d just called me naive. I was tight, titillating, an asshole and naive. I had to remember all these things, qualities of my selfconsciousness.

It took Lee another few moments to talk. There was a man walking his dog on the path at the bottom of our hill. He looked in our direction and waved. He watched us for a few seconds before moving on.