Sex and Death in the American Novel (17 page)

So there I was in the can, after a show, and this goddess with long red hair and hard little tits follows me in, ready to go.

She turns around and says, “I'll let you fuck me up the ass…” Her bare flanks exposed, all I have to do is reach over and stroke one smooth cheek.
Don't do it
. The last time I did this I had to tell Amy. After two weeks home unable to stand that trusting look in her eyes, that way she acted like we were back to normal. I couldn't stand it. I'm a fucking idiot—had to be honest, and Amy almost left me. The agreement was, if she stayed with me, I could go on tours, but the rule was no sex. No penetration—except the mouth.

I groan every time this happens, “Wish I could,” I say and stroke again the firm skin, the tight muscle before me. She
reminds me of a racehorse, muscles standing out long and lean above and below the fabric of her shiny black skirt. “Promised the old lady. I only do blow jobs.” Listen to me. Every time I say this my head spins. Ten years ago I would have been the one giving head just for a chance to cut a record, and now look at me.

I take one long look at the beauty before me and open the stall door. If I'm lucky that little brunette will still be hanging out by the bus. We have to leave in a half hour to drive to Phoenix, ten hours away.

“Wait,” she says. “I can do that.”

I turn and her hands are on my face, fingers running over my throat, squeezing my shoulders, until she is on the floor. I always wonder if their knees get sore like this. It's not like there's carpeting here in these bathrooms. Concrete seems to work just fine. She looks up at me and beams.

She squeezes my ass and pulls on the waist of my jeans, yanking them down a few inches, and unbuttons my fly. My hands weave through her silky hair, pulling the long fiery strands through my fingers. Soft little hands pull down my underwear, wrap around my shaft, cup my balls. One she takes in her mouth and looks up at me as she sucks on it. She flashes an adoring smile. I stroke one side of her cheek. She sets to work.

This is thrilling. No one would understand, but this goes way beyond getting off. This chick wants to make me happy. Wants to serve me. She's got talent, and some of them don't, believe me. With a moan here or a nod there she sucks me all the way to the back of her throat, her eyes rolling back in her head as she does. I pump my hips to get closer to her luscious mouth, and feel the familiar agitation of jizz in my balls followed by a throbbing need when she lets me pound the head of my cock against the back of her throat.

“You are so fucking good at this.”

She looks at me again and gives me a nod of the head before going back to work.

I place my hands on either side of her head, getting ready to shoot off and then she pulls back.

“What babe? You're doing great.”

“Thanks,” she says and giggles. “Can you lay down, my knees are getting kinda sore.”

“Sure thing,” I say. I am not a total asshole.

I lay down on the cold floor, this will only take another two minutes.

Back to work, my cock once more in from the cold. She has a beautiful mouth, some of her lipstick has smeared at one corner, but otherwise the whole pretty picture it is still intact. I
take one finger and trace the line of her lips, working around my cock bulging inside. I imagine I'm slipping inside her other mouth, the one I am not going to plunge into because I love my wife. I have to save something for her. My entire body starts going rigid thinking about this chick, her mouth, her cunt…

Again, cold air hits my shaft. I open my eyes and to my utter disbelief this girl has hiked up her skirt and is lowering herself onto my cock, standing in the air, dying for entry. The drippy ginger mound sinks all the way down. I stare in shock.
Get out of here
, my head screams but my body will not listen. Still rock hard.

“I—” I start to say something and she covers my mouth with a small wet hand. The girl tosses her head back, laughing, her hair tickling my bare legs as she starts riding me. “I love fucking rock stars!”

The ending needed work. Or maybe it didn't. If this was going to sell, the guy would bust a throbbing nut at the end, sweet sticky jizm would pump all over that pretty face and she would love it, even if he didn't return the favor.

I hated writing straight porn.

The voice of the stewardess came over the loudspeaker announcing that passengers should stow all electronics in preparation for landing. My stomach fluttered. I read over my work quickly. It sucked. Still, I had a draft, which was more than I had before. I closed my laptop, and after I'd rearranged my bags, I turned my attention to the window and watched the grand buildings emerge through a brown haze.

I saw him as soon as I came out of security. His face was relaxed, I was relieved to see it; the butterflies in my stomach disappeared when I sank into his open arms. “I am so glad to see you,” he breathed into my hair.

My answer was to squeeze him harder. It wasn't until just then that I felt how much I wanted him. Even with all the phone calls and emails, I didn't feel him as concrete until that moment. I looked up then, as when we danced, his shoulders rounded and his neck arched down, to make his face level with mine when I spoke in a dramatic voice, “And I you.” I hauled him toward the direction I imagined was the exit with one hand wrapped around his waist.

He grabbed both my purse and overnight bag with one hand, slung it all over his leather-clad shoulder, and took my hand with his other and led me to one of several cabs waiting on the gray curb outside. Sun shone down, making the exhaust from the cars and cabs look both hideous and beautiful. He stepped back and let me in first, then lay his arm along the seat behind
my head when he came in. The sound that his leather sleeve made against the material of the seat was as soft as a dial turning on the TV, signaling something different to come.

His eyes were on mine the entire ride back to his walk-up in Brooklyn. I tried to return his gaze but dropped my eyes before I let loose a nervous laugh. The familiar voice of the NPR announcer droned from the front of the cab. The driver and the complex scents of so many people before me pulled me farther out of my element.

To loosen up, I tried to be playful, flipping my leg over his. His eyes widened. He stiffened, as if he were embarrassed, but he didn't remove my leg, only twisted around to more fully face me. I swung my head around, taking in the brown water below, and as we were crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, the lights that began to twinkle in the dusk.

“It's Sesame Street,” I said, as the cab rolled to a stop.

He looked from the brownstones to me and laughed, “I suppose so.”

I followed him up a set of concrete stairs to his apartment. Jasper felt different to me. It was less important to let him know where I stood than to actually see where this would go, what he would be like in his own space and with me in it.

He stepped back away from the doorway, letting me go in first. His eyes followed everywhere I went. I wanted to sit and see what he would do, but the sense of expectation was so strong I didn't feel it was right. I tipped my head around the corner in the tiny kitchen, spotless, and I could hear him wrestle my bag to the floor. Then I felt him behind me, so close I could feel the heat of his breath. I turned around and there he was, in a plain white t-shirt and jeans. He looked well-scrubbed and happy, like a boy about to get a present. I liked the idea that I might be the present.

I moved backward to draw things out; I didn't want to seem too eager, having spent the last hour in a cab in close proximity to his sterling male qualities, his thoughtful looks, the way he watched the way I took in the scenery outside the windows. He was amused. Was it something I didn't see about myself, something only he saw?

He sat on the arm of his sofa. The arms were big, flat wooden panels. He looked more like he was posing there, not knowing what to do with himself. When I made my way toward two doors at the far end of the living room, he stood and followed me over. Every time he came close and then moved away again, it was like when my mother would blow on the coals of a fire in her big rock fireplace, making the coals redder and hotter, then letting them rest, burning deeper into themselves, each time closer to sparking a fire.

Along one wall was a stereo on a steel and glass shelf. Underneath were CDs lined up, and as I suspected, there were CDs by Sigue Sigue Sputnik
and the Dead Milkmen that looked quite old, stuff that I had never heard of, jazz, and there they were: John Denver, and next to that, Simon & Garfunkel.

“Holy shit,” I said, holding both CDs in my hand.

From behind me his arm came around and he grabbed both, I could hear the smile in his voice. “Do you think less of me?”

I tried to turn but he was too close. “No way. My dad used to play this stuff all the time. Whenever we went to the cabin in Montana on the car ride over, or when he got in these moods.”

“You have a cabin in Montana?” His voice was so close to my ear. His breath, clean with a tinge of cigarettes and coffee from far away. “That's my favorite,” and his long forefinger rested on the line for “Wild Montana Skies.”

I smiled what was undoubtedly the goofiest smile I have ever allowed someone who was not family to witness. It was delight, surprise, and a feeling of safety, like home. “I thought I was the only other person on the planet under fifty that listened to John Denver.”

His mouth worked into a smile at the skin behind my ear, his breath and soft lips rested at the softest part of my neck. It made me shiver. Then he was pushing me toward the first door on my left, a French door with a white curtain behind it. His arms ran the length of mine, connecting all down the back of each arm, nothing else. This made me long for the rest of him; I wanted to feel him behind me, but there was nothing. I moved forward, opening the doors; the floor was still hardwood, a cream-colored rug sat in the middle, and around the walls were shelves filled with books, some upright, many horizontal, paperbacks, hardbacks. I thought to later when I would be able to run my fingers over them and see if he wrote in his books, and in what order he kept them. He was on me like a spring out of its socket, his mouth all over the back of my neck, breathing, kissing, hands working rough, then gently down my shoulders, to my hands, which he wrapped up in his and turned me toward him, while still backing me towards the bed.

I buried my hands in his hair, then ran them down the surface of his throat, resting on a patch of stubble he had missed; I stood on tiptoe and ran my lips over the spot, then twisted my head there so I could feel the scratch against my temple. He placed both hands on my face, kissed me long and deeply and laid me back on the bed.

This time was quick and dirty. Funny how the first couple of times had been so slow in comparison, when he was more new to me, and now, after a few weeks’ worth of emails, here he was so urgent. I didn't mind; it was exciting to feel so much desire, both within me and directed at me.

“Is this okay?” he breathed.

I nodded and closed my eyes, wrapping my legs around his slender hips, feeling him moving beneath my calves. I laughed in response to his question. I missed him, I was full of him. Everything was okay. Life just then was quite good.

We went to dinner in a café not far from his house.

Over coffees I squinted at him. “Do you think you take yourself too seriously?”

“How do you mean?”

I adjusted myself, watched the chef behind the counter work up an order, slam a dark hand on a ringer before turning back to the steam of the kitchen.

“Well, so I know it's important to you to explain the world the way you see it,” I said.

“That's my job. Sounds like you don't agree,” he said.

“Tristan was like that too. He gave everything he had to this ideal, and in the end it ate him up,” I said.

He leaned in and slid his cool hand under mine. “I am not your brother, Vivi.”

“I know that,” I said, frustrated that I couldn't articulate myself, “but he made himself miserable. He was so unhappy and it was so pointless.”

“Not to him, I would imagine.”

I sat for a moment, liking the feel of my hand in his, warming in the glow of the evening, two glasses of wine, roast beef and apple pie for dessert.

“I guess what I mean, what I'm saying badly, is that I want you to be happy…that matters to me,” I let that sink in, then said, “Life is really short you know.”

He laughed then and released my hand. “I know it. Do you know it?”

“Is that a dig at my choice of subject matter?”

He shook his head. “Sorry. That came out wrong.”

“I mean that life is too short to spend it working on something that isn't any fun. How many hours a day do you work?” I asked.

“Probably a good eight.” He paused. “Not that I am actually writing the whole time. Since my parents died—”

“They're both dead? I mean gone…I thought it was just your mother?”

He squeezed my hand and removed it from the table. “It has been a long time. I am okay now. Really. My father died a few years after my mother. I was in college. That was probably when I really got serious.”

“But you've been publishing since you were seventeen I thought.”

“Yes. That. Well…”

Here my brother's voice intruded for the first time in a while.
He was like Dad
…and then my brother's awed impressed voice in the car on the way to see Jasper in Montana, back when he was just an idol—another wordy moron.
He's been writing since he was seventeen. He published in the
New Yorker
when he was nineteen.

“What I mean is that I didn't need to get lost anywhere, for a long time, like you do in a novel, until my father passed. Probably losing my mother got me started. She was always encouraging me anyway, reading to me like we talked about before.” He paused and gave an uncertain look.