Jill Emerson - I Am Curious (Thirty)

I liked this act, though. I was just about to make it, and I was looking down at his face, and his eyes were closed and his teeth clenched, and he started to twitch and he made it and I felt his come spurt into me, jets of it, he must have been saving it up for weeks, and I watched his face as he came, and that did it, that sent me over the edge, and I came with him and fell forward and almost passed out on top of him, his cock still inside me, still reasonably hard, and I almost blacked out.

It was hard to get rid of him, because he wanted to talk and he wanted to be tender (God forbid!) and he also wanted to do it a second time. I wanted nothing more than for him to get out of my bed and my bedroom and my house and my life. I figured it was easier to lay him than to talk to him, so I put my finger to his lips and got back in bed with him. I was smoking a cigarette, and I lay back on the pillow smoking the cigarette while he stroked my breasts and kissed them. He wasn’t very good at this, but it excited him, which was probably why he was doing it. He couldn’t have had much experience with girls. I don’t suppose he was more than seventeen, and maybe I was the first woman he had ever screwed, although I doubt this.

The second time wasn’t terrific. He took a long time getting hard, didn’t really get very hard after all, got on top, and came after four or five strokes.

It wasn’t the world’s greatest orgasm for him. It was nothing at all for me, but I made a little pretense of coming along with him. One gets in the habit, I suppose.

He got a little cocky afterward. “I suppose I can come around from time to time. Even when there’s no snow on the ground, huh? Say, do you do this a lot? You know, delivery boys and all that? I mean, I’m just curious. Not to pry into your affairs or anything. Your affairs, that’s a good one, huh?”

I almost forgot to pay him the ten dollars. For the snow, the ten dollars for shoveling the snow. As a matter of fact I did forget, but you can bet your sweet bippy he didn’t forget, but he didn’t mention it, either, and when he was dressed and ready to be on his way he shifted his feet and looked at the floor, not knowing how to ask for the money after he had just romped in my bed, but at the same time not wanting to go off without it, and I at first couldn’t figure out what in hell he was having trouble saying, and then I remembered and almost laughed aloud. I gave him the ten dollars. He blushed. He went away. I went to the bathroom. I took off my diaphragm — which you are not supposed to do for I forget how many hours, but what you are supposed to do is leave it on until morning, however many hours that is. I just didn’t really care. I stood there douching like Lady Macbeth washing her hands, but no, I don’t guess it was like that, because I didn’t feel that kind of guilt. I don’t know what it was exactly. What it was was strange.

I took another shower and I changed the sheets and put the dirty ones in the washing machine and made a cup of coffee and poured it out untasted and made a drink, vodka, the housewife’s friend. I drank it while I was washing and powdering and putting away my diaphragm. Then I made another.

I don’t remember exactly what was going through my mind then. A lot of things, I guess.

When the phone rang I knew exactly what it was. I have never had so strong a premonition. I knew just what had happened. I knew, without the slightest room for doubt, that my husband Howie was dead. That he had been killed in some sort of traffic accident in New York and that they were calling to tell me.

It was Howie. “Just called to tell you I’ll be a little late. I’ll probably catch the six-oh-four or the next one after that if they cancel it.”

“You’re alive.”

“What?”

“Howie, I won’t be here when you get back. I can’t be, I have to go away.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m leaving.”

“Jan, what are you—?”

“I can’t talk now. A boy came to the door to shovel the snow. I let him do it, I gave him ten dollars.”

“Seems a little high, but I guess—”

“He said it was the going rate.”

“Well, fine, then. I’m glad you got it done. Honey, I don’t quite understand—”

“I let him fuck me.”

“What?”

“I let him fuck me. Twice. In our bed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Maybe you ought to stay in the city. In a hotel. I won’t be here when you get back. I suppose I’ll have to take the car, so maybe you should stay in town.”

“Well, if I stay in town you can stay at the house. But I still don’t see—”

“No. No, I cannot. I absolutely cannot stay in this house. I cannot stay in this house for another moment. I can’t. Howie, I don’t know what’s happening to me but I have to let it happen by myself.”

He was saying something else. I didn’t let him finish. I hung up and broke the connection, and then I took the phone off the hook so it wouldn’t ring again.

After that it was amazing how cool I was. I mean that it amazes me now that I think about it. I packed a suitcase. I threw clothes into it. I found the birth control pills that I had stopped taking when we decided I would stop taking them, and I took one right away and put the rest in my purse. I had dressed after making love (I don’t mean making love, we didn’t make love, we screwed) and I was wearing — oh, really who cares? Who cares what I was wearing?

I almost forgot this book, my diary. I haven’t written anything in it in two weeks. (Until now, when I seem intent on filling the whole thing at one sitting.) I had been keeping it on a shelf in my closet, a shelf Howie was unlikely to browse over. I came across it while gathering up clothes, and something made me realize I would want it. So I put it in the suitcase.

I lugged the suitcase out to the car — I wouldn’t have any trouble getting out, he had done a superb job of snow shoveling — and went back for my purse and the bankbook. I stopped in the bathroom and had a long look at the mirror. I had virtually had an affair with that mirror since my jump in the hay with what’s-his-name (my God, I really don’t know his name, we really never did get around to names, isn’t that hysterical!) and I kept running to look at myself in the mirror to see if I looked different. It really was like losing my virginity. I had kept looking in mirrors then too, just as I had done years earlier when I got my period for the first time. You always look to see if you look different, I guess everyone does that. I don’t think I look any different now but I keep checking.

Anyway, I took out my lipstick and wrote on the mirror. I wrote Howard and put a dash after it, and then I couldn’t think of anything to write, not a single thing. I was going to wipe it out but I didn’t get around to it, so it’s there to greet him if he comes home tonight after all, or it’ll greet him some other time, whenever he does come home, and I can’t imagine what will go through his mind when he sees it. Just that I’m out of my mind, I guess, which we both know now anyway.

Question: If you know you’re nuts, then are you really?

Answer: I don’t know, I’ve never been out with one.

I closed our savings account, or rather I took all but twenty dollars out of it, so it’s not officially closed but it might as well be. I have almost four thousand dollars in cash plus a purse full of credit cards, so I can go anywhere and do anything and sooner or later Howard will pay for it. Which is not nice of me, and if I figure out whether I love him or hate him or what, maybe I’ll do something more concrete about it. I don’t even know what that last sentence means. I’m slipping into automatic writing and besides my arm hurts.