Trapper and Emmeline (3 page)

I kept grip on Emmeline’s hand as we walked to class. Neither of us mentioned the hand. I wanted to take her straight to my apartment for some heavily Trapper-influenced lovemaking, but that wasn’t an option. Today was a class presentation day in Cold War History and Emmeline was on the bubble.

I found it hard to reconcile her embarrassment about ordering coffee with what I saw in class a few minutes later. She bounced up to the front of the room and addressed forty other students without notes. She wrote pronouncements on the whiteboard, with obviously incorrect dates. No way Ronald Reagan was born in 1911.

Every time she took the dry-erase marker and reached up, her shirt slid up her waist to her ribs. When she stood on her toes, her ass tightened, and we stared.

Then she turned back to us. She would pul her shirt down while she spoke—but this caused her buttons to detonate, repeatedly revealing the tops of her breasts. She never dropped a syl able, and blithely buttoned up, stretching the fabric across her epic chest like a man-hating form of shrink-wrap. The round openings between the overstressed buttons revealed her skin and bra.

Then a new thought would occur to her and she would turn back to the white-board, and the whole traumatic cycle would begin again. I was dying from an erection that wanted to punch through my jeans. I probably wasn’t the only one. The entire class was dead quiet, watching with the intensity that a cat brings to baby mice. It was surreal. The only sound in the room was Emmeline’s chirpy, up-beat voice, spewing made-up nonsense that nobody questioned or possibly even heard.

She was relaxed and unflustered. She winked at me in the middle of her presentation.

So that was Emmeline. An orgy of eye fucking from every guy in her col ege class:
Too easy.
Ordering coffee:
Too
hard.

Today is the day,
I decided. Time to lock this girl down.

I took her hand again after class, and walked her down the stairs to street level. The city felt insubstantial, as if we could walk directly through buildings and speeding traffic to get to a place with privacy. The only solid thing in the world was Emmeline’s hand in mine.

I think I was a little drunk on Emmeline and how the world treated her. That morning I’d watched her play around with popping her blouse open at inappropriate moments. I’d watched the barista vivisect her with his eyes. I’d watched my classmates gawk at her during her presentation—the boys rapt, the girls incredulous.

I’d seen how al this attention worked on her, even though she never acknowledged it. It made her buoyant. It made her a little drunk too.

So Emmeline let me lead her through the city, two drunks on a mission. She knew exactly where we were going, and didn’t mention it. I practiced being familiar with her—a hand on her back to guide her around a pile of garbage bags on the sidewalk, a squeeze on her hand when we laughed.

We slipped natural y and easily into
that
conversation. The easy, significant conversation for new couples with busy, nervous minds, which barely requires thought to maintain. We compared our tastes in various things, as if we didn’t already know them from weeks of friendship. It was wonderful getting the same information from her again when I was holding her hand—it somehow sounded new and exciting. I was meeting her al over again. We discussed movies, coffee, books, lovers,
and clothes
.

For several blocks, we walked behind a twenty-something woman going our direction into the East Vil age. I was staring hard enough to knock her over. I final y had to point her out to Emmeline, because if I didn’t talk about her, I just wouldn’t be able to talk.

“For example, about clothes,” I said, “Those jeans are total y cool.”

“
Those
jeans are?”

“Yeah. I think ripped-up jeans is a style that wil last forever,” I said.

They wouldn’t. Ripped-up jeans, especial y the aggressively sexy, ass-ripped-out style of thrashed jeans favored by the drug chic scene of the East Vil age, were a fashion bubble that popped roughly the same nanosecond I said ‘forever.’

The woman ahead of us had a single gaping tear in the seat of her pants. As she moved, her butt-checks winked in and out of the sunlight. It was mesmerizing. If I’d been alone, I might have fol owed her like a lost dog and eventual y died of exposure.

Emmeline wasn’t volunteering any opinion, so I asked, “What do you think?”

“I think they’re cool too.” Her voice was unadorned. I had her words, but I couldn’t tel what she had actual y said.

“I think we should get
you
some torn up jeans,” I teased.

“Me too,” she said in the same voice.

“No, real y,” I said. “Every second that you’re walking down the street, and the world can’t clearly see your ass—you’re committing a crime.”

This final y made her smirk.

Encouraged, I went on: “I think from now on, you should think of your ass as a responsibility to the world. I mean, look at you! Your clothes require entirely too much imagination. Every guy we pass should be able to see everything about your ass.”

“So therefore I should rip some holes in my jeans?”

Did her voice hold some amusement? I knew the risks I was taking—I was talking dirty to a girl during the most precarious phase of a relationship. We had known each other for weeks, but this was the first moment verging on romantic... and I was getting sleazy about her ass. I was actual y trying to compliment her, and maybe chal enge her a little, to see if she’d push back. I wanted to show her I was not as safe as she probably thought. There was also the remote chance she
liked
sleazebags.

“Don’t you get the sense that guys like your ass?”

“Oh yes,” she said, with a short laugh. “I get that sense.”

“What about your legs?”

“They say I have great legs,” she said. “Guys in general say that.”

“If you’re not wearing jeans with holes, you should be wearing short skirts.”

“Like, how short?”

“Hmmm.” I pretended to consider. “My definition of short is probably different from your definition of short.”

“Wel , we
are
talking about what
you
want,” she said.

“If a girl is going to wear a short skirt, it should be
short
, as short as it can go. And the skirt should fly up when you’re walking, and the wind should shove it around.”

“I don’t know if I could get used to that.”

“I think you could.” I was less flippant now, more earnest. (A little too pleading?) “Just try it. Wear nothing but short skirts for a few weeks. You’l stop thinking about it.”

“I’m imagining stairways. I’m thinking of the drafts in the subways.”

“You’l get used to it. Just remember: If guys
can’t
see your ass, then you’re committing a crime.”

The woman in front of us turned off our path at a corner. I had to struggle not to stare after her. A part of me thought about fol owing the woman anyway, but how pathetic would
that
be? Dragging Emmeline
away
from my apartment to ogle a woman?

“I’l tel you what the crime is,” I said. “Guys are going to lust after you, no matter what. You’re pretty. You’re tal . You’re stacked. You have a big chest—I’ve been double-checking it since the Russian girl.”

“But
why
is it a crime?
Why
is it wrong to cover up?”

“Because you’re stealing from men,” I said simply. “You’re stealing from their fantasies. They are going to think about you later, that’s a given. But you’re stealing al the details they should have in their thoughts. Those details—they cost you nothing. On a different day, you’d be wearing a different outfit, and those guys would get those details. So why not every day?”

“I’m… committing a crime if I don’t show up in their jack-off fantasies?”

“Yeah!”

It sounded less stupid when she said it for me. But it stil sounded stupid.

“Why should I care about being a criminal, Trapper?”

We turned onto my street, and I suddenly remembered that I was leading a girl up to my apartment. We weren’t going

there to hang out. We were going there to
make
out. And this was our foreplay. We were on the cusp—our friendship was turning romantic.

Or perhaps it was stil something more matter-of-fact than romantic. She later told me she felt we were having a very mature talk, measuring compatibilities like
grown-ups
. In this early conversation, we were covering miles, whereas two shy kids with sweaty hands would have crawled along with blushes and stammers.

“Why should you care about being a criminal?” I repeated her question. “Because I don’t date girls who commit crimes.”

There. I’d laid it out. I could stil get rejected, and at that point, it would hurt more than a little. She didn’t even know my favorite color yet.
Mauve.
But she knew one thing with utter certainty, because I finished by blurting: “That’s my thing. I like girls who are a little slutty.”

It hadn’t been official, even to me, until I said it.
I liked slutty girls. Huh!
It didn’t seem so bad when I put it that way, either. A little perverse, but honest. Cutely lascivious. I tried to give her a roguish look, but quickly gave up.

Emmeline seemed to be taking it wel enough. Her hand in mine was relaxed and her stride was even. She didn’t break away and flee.

“How wil I know if I’m looking slutty enough?”

I had answers ready, fresh from my midnight store of imaginative jack-off material.

“Here’s how you know. At least once per day, some guy asks you out. Or whistles at you. Or makes a comment. Then you know you’re hot. That’s a requirement. Do you think you can do that?”

“That happens enough already,” she said without inflection.

“And guys start talking to you. They remember your schedule, and keep an eye out for you when you’re supposed to show up. Then you know you’re making an impression on them.”

We entered my building, and waited for the elevator. What she said next froze me to the core.

“And when do I start?”

I met her eyes, raising my sunglasses. She watched me expressionlessly. I couldn’t tel if she was with the program or not. It was disconcerting because Emmeline was categorical y
n o t
the withholding type. Somehow, however, the conversation had drifted from my desires to what we would do about them.

I tried to sound nonchalant, as if this was the most natural thing in the world. “Wel , first, we should get upstairs. Then I’l get you out of al your clothes.”

She nodded.

“Then, later, we’l take some scissors to your jeans.”

“Okay.” I saw she was final y breathing a little deeper.

To show her it wasn’t al about me, I added, “And meanwhile, we’l talk about what
you
like.”

She gave a little shrug. “I’m stil figuring that out. I don’t have a bunch of ideas like you do. But give me time. Is that okay? Can we just… do you for now?”

The elevator door pinged open, and I grabbed her in an impulsive embrace, as if the sound had freed me to move. I walked her into the elevator, and we were already kissing.

I said, “I’m going to make you into a wet dream.”

“Now
that
I like,” she giggled. “But a wet dream for who?”

“I’m not selfish,” I said.

“I figured that out.”

“You’re going to be a wet dream for
everybody
.”

Her reply was whispered into my shoulder, almost as if she didn’t want me to hear it, or she didn’t want to hear herself say it.

“Promise, Trapper?”

We didn’t waste any more time talking. She pul ed me back in and kissed my cheek and chin until I pressed my mouth against hers.

Emmeline was a greedy kisser—passionate and demanding. Maybe I was not as experienced as she was, but the girls I’d kissed in the past waited for me with open, soft, watery mouths. I would have to tease them awake before they started to react. It was like I had to convince these girls that kissing was fun. So maybe it
was
just me.

There was no such passivity with Emmeline. She put her hands on my head and turned it the way she liked it. She nibbled my lips. Her tongue darted into my mouth and drew my tongue out. For once, I’d found a wel -matched kisser, and maybe I was even overmatched. I fol owed her queues and slid my hands up to her neck, cupped her jaw, and tilted her head. She liked when I steered her like that. A little groan escaped her lips.

The elevator door slid open and we teetered into the hal way, unwil ing to part.

I held her head tighter, pul ed her lips harder against my mouth. Her eyes fluttered. My hard-on was locked between us like a fence post trying to keep us apart. Normal y I’d be self-conscious about my dick, but there weren’t enough free