John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

The Vietnamese broke off, looked at him with raised eyebrows.

Torrence and Bibisch laughed. Bibisch leaned over against Torrence, as if simply to share a confidence, but he felt her linger over the casual touch, press a little closer than necessary. He felt his manhood harden. He was that pent up.

“I heard this Hand when he arrive,” she whispered, “he is bitching about the quarters to stay in, no hot water, he was so jet lag, he want a good meal, this was like a kidnap almost, he said.” And then she made a noise like a puppy whimpering.

Torrence and Bibisch laughed till tears came. Hand snapped a glare at them, sensing he was the object of some unheard drollery.

Torrence looked at Bibisch and stopped laughing. She looked gravely up at him. “You can see the moon,” she said, “from the storeroom, if you open … I don’t know the word: la fenêtre…”

He nodded. His throat was dry; the pants at his crotch were taut. “You want to, um, check out the moon?”

She stood, nodding, and went to the stairs. He followed her, aware that some of the others were trying not to stare at them. They climbed the narrow, winding, creaking stairway, two flights, to the top of the old police station. There was a storage room, dusty and smelling of mildew, packed with weapons in crates, and the single window. Ornate black bars over the glazed window, this side. Light streamed through the window; the rest of the room was a jumble of sharp-edged shadows. They crossed to the window, and he tried to open it. It hadn’t been opened in years; wouldn’t budge. He was a little embarrassed at being unable to open the window; then felt foolish at wanting to look strong to her.

“It’s old,” she said, “and the wetness, it makes the wood…”

She shrugged, looking at him. “But the moonlight is still here…” She motioned at the window with a tilt of her head, without taking her eyes from his. “The moon is there, but…”

He looked at the window glass. The moon was distorted by the glaze, was big and blurry, as if the moon’s light had been evaporated into a milky spray, something to bathe in. Her skin in the moonlight…

“It’s beautiful,” he heard himself say. Clumsy at this kind of thing.

“ Mais… I am cold here,” she said.

He knew an opening when it was offered him. He put his arms around her and she came to him easily, dropped all pretense instantly, and kissed him, lingering only a moment on the lips, going quickly to a mesh of tongues, pressing her breasts against him, full enough for him to feel even through their clothes, and it went on and on. They kissed till they swayed from standing too tightly together, and then she took the initiative again and took one of his hands, guiding it up under her coat, under a sweater, into a good place, between flesh and the moist, welcoming, static-electricity itch of damp, body-warmed wool. She closed his hand over her breast. Closed it instructively, hard. To let him know her taste: she liked a hard grip, at least for now, she wanted aggression.

“Yes,” she said as he squeezed, hard, felt the tissue give like a swollen sponge but exquisitely silken (blocking an image of Claire, forcing himself to concentrate on now —and it wasn’t difficult to focus: the desire was roaring through him like a subway express).

“ Oui, ” she said as his other hand gripped her ass and bruised it. “ Forte. Harder . Oui. ”

Following his instincts, he bit her full lower lip. Not quite hard enough to break the skin. “Oh, oui, encore, hurt me a little, tell me what I am…”

She taught him things. She directed him; instructed him to abuse her just a little, and both of them sensed that it was entirely appropriate for the two of them, it was in the pocket, it was them. Knowing full well she was a political feminist, Torrence himself a believer in absolute women’s equality. And simultaneously: she asked to be dominated. And he fell into it with an almost frightening naturalness. Almost tearing off her clothes, not bothering to remove his own. He simply dropped his zipper (she liked that, too, this time)…

They lay on a bed of shed clothing, Torrence almost tearing into her, taking her, the first time, till he came, resting like a lump of slag on her, then hearing her whisper to him again, Hurt me a little, hurt me a little…

At the same moment, but during daylight: in the same instant that Torrence thrust himself into Bibisch, Jerome-X lay on his back in the very center of Bettina’s double king-size bed, staring up at the Brobdingnagian folds of her flesh descending on him, her enormous, doughy-soft but powerful thighs, the great waddling smothering ebony pillow of her belly hanging down, almost covering the black and chocolate and glistening pink bifurcations of her vagina; the small, floral organ nearly hidden in folds of thigh flesh like the interior of some oversize Claus Oldenberg orchid; an orchid of swollen flesh and surreal excess. The smell of her soap and the smell of her musk and sweat and skin…

All of it coming down on Jerome like a sexual apocalypse.

”Take it,” she ordered him. Obediently, he opened his mouth. She snapped, “What’d you say?”

“I said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’” And the gratification of his submission made his cock even harder as she encompassed his face and very nearly, deliciously nearly, smothered him…

Torrence, afterward, holding Bibisch tenderly in his arms, kissing her eyelids, kissing her lips softly, stroking her head soothingly as she nestled against him. As if comforting a child frightened by thunder. “ Toujours, I adore you,” she said. “I never stop watching you.” She sighed—and then stiffened a little, looked sharply at him. “You won’t tell anyone what I ask you to be doing? OK?”

“No,” he said. “I won’t.” The moonlight streamed over her white skin. “You look almost…” He almost said made out of moonlight, but stopped himself. “You look good in the moonlight, it fits you…”

Would he tell anyone? Hell no. He was amazed at the things he’d done, amazed at his own rapacity. He’d never done that sort of thing… role playing, sexual-discipline games, even talking dirty in sex. Never. He’d had no idea it would evoke such arousal in him.

God, am I that sick? he wondered. Is that me, or has the war done it to me, made me this way?

But he knew, even as he asked himself. Sexual dominance was deeply a part of him, and always had been. It had been closeted in him, till now. Maybe it was a sickness, but he had felt it shiver sympathetically in the core of him, and he knew it was integral to him.

But he also knew it wouldn’t work if she didn’t enjoy it. He was too empathetic to be a true sadist. He was just a little bent, apparently. Just a bit… kinked.

And he felt a little better about it when he reflected that Bibisch had led him through the whole thing. She’d begun it, instructed him in it, and in some sense it was really Bibisch, with a kind of sexual judo, who’d really been in control the whole time.

“Did you know,” he asked, “that I’d get into, uh, this kind of thing?”

“Yes.”

“ How did you know? I mean—I didn’t know myself. Am I… do I seem like I’d be a…”

“No, no! When you fight, you are very strong and beautiful and efficient, but you are not cruel, and you are very kind to everyone. Pasolini and some others, they think you are…”

“Soft?”

“ Oui. But you are not… not soft. You are kind inside. I don’t know how I knew that your sex was… I don’t know. C’est subtil. Probably no one sees but me. I see because I am one too, from the other side…”