Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

Peter put his hands on her breasts and squeezed slightly to feel their give, new to him, the beginning of middle age for Diane.

Diane pulled away quickly. She shed the half-off robe and lay facedown on the bed.

I’ve embarrassed her, he thought. But he liked the age of her body. She wouldn’t believe that, so he didn’t bother to tell her. She was new to him again. The girl Diane, with her tight skin and fully inflated tits, was gone. But this softer, rounded, weathered Diane was just as good — better because she was unfamiliar.

He put his hands on her back and rubbed. She fidgeted at his touch, her undulating spine like hard pebbles twisting under the walk of his hands. When he wandered below to her ass, he felt some decay at the underside of the buttocks, soft pockets remaining from the pregnancy. He liked them too. She tightened while he touched there, again obviously embarrassed at their condition, so he moved off.

I don’t need you to be young, Peter wanted to say to Diane. We grew up together. If you are still a child, then so am I.

Young women are for affairs. Peter smiled to himself.

He was erect from the look and feel of her body. By now she had sighed with relaxation; her eyes were closed; the hard board of her back had buckled into soft flesh. He stopped the massage and undressed. Diane’s eyes were closed. Peter lay next to her. He was taut; his muscles echoed with the tension and desire of his penis.

Diane sighed and turned her head, resting it against his shoulder. She held his penis like a flute: her thumb propped up the instrument; the fingertips touched its thick vein to play the stops. She reached down with her free hand and gathered his sweaty cascading balls and repackaged the supply with its spout. She leaned forward and looked at the arrangement she had made, her head in a tilt of appraisal. “They get big when you boys grow up, don’t they?” she said.

Peter laughed. He felt both pride and triumph at her remark.

“I’m tired,” she said. “Do you mind just doing it?”

“Sure,” he said, but felt a twinge of disappointment. There was usually an obeisance to his genitals prior to intercourse — just as he courted her body before marrying it.

He moved on top of her. She guided his penis in. Her vagina felt less strange than the last time, when the interior seemed to have been rewallpapered with a sticky fabric. Diane claimed nursing had caused that; he had wondered if she was simply unexcited. But the sensation hadn’t been dryness, rather a stubborn lack of elasticity.

Some of that unyielding effect remained this time, even when she was thoroughly wet. The walls had become glacial, their previous living caress replaced by a smoothness that he fancied was indifference. Diane seemed almost asleep while he moved inside her. Maybe her cunt was asleep.

“ Do you like this?” Larry asked the little boy Peter .

Peter stopped moving inside Diane at the memory.

“Something wrong?” Diane asked.

“Are you very tired?”

“No,” Diane said, and kissed him with warm, sleepy lips. “I’m relaxed. Don’t worry about me.”

“ Do you touch yourself there?” Larry asked. “Do you like it when you touch yourself there? ”

Peter squeezed his eyes, tried to squeeze out the husky, lascivious voice (mocking and insistent) from his brain. He kissed his wife’s neck, her lean, smooth dark neck, a part of her he loved, a favorite piece, sure to bring orgasm; but his lips felt numb, unable to taste. Peter pushed himself in hard and yanked out, hard in, hard out. He tried to force himself to pleasure. Diane moaned. Her arms came around his back and pulled at him.

Larry’s hand reached inside eight-year-old Peter’s pants and searched with his mealy fingers for the little penis .

Forget it, forget it, forget it. Peter arched up and smashed inside. Diane sighed and moaned. She made a hissing sound with her teeth.

“ Do you do this?” Larry had asked. He rolled the little penis against Peter’s flat stomach, rolling it like dough on a board, back and forth, back and forth .

Did I enjoy that the first time? Or was it later?

“Oh! Oh!” Diane’s legs hooked around Peter, feet binding his calves, and pressed him to her.

She’s coming, Peter realized, amazed. He had been shot with Novocain, dead from the waist down, not weak, but numbly hard. Might as well let her enjoy it, he thought. He dug at her, dug inside, reaching for her center. She bucked with joy, held him tight, and twisted her pelvis against his hard, dead sausage, yelling with release.

And then, over the top of the sound of her orgasm, Byron cried out, the siren on. Mother and son wailed together. I’m lifeless, Peter thought, and saw Larry’s cold eyes watching little Peter’s scared face.

Diane and Byron can cry and laugh, but I’m lifeless.

“My God!” Diane said, sweat covering her. “You think Byron heard us?”

Peter listened to Byron’s distress, unmoved. The wailing sounded like a car alarm.

“I’d better go to him,” Diane said. “Did you come?”

“Yes,” Peter lied.

“You’re still so hard.”

Peter pulled out. The base of his penis ached. It looked red and angry. Byron still wailed. Diane got into the robe and rushed to her son’s room.

Peter listened to Diane make soothing sounds at Byron. “Yes, baby. You go back to sleep. Mommy and Daddy are okay.”

Peter held his thick old hairy prick, hard and unfeeling, in his hand. I’m lifeless . He rubbed himself and it was like touching something that didn’t belong to him.

He got out of bed and dressed again in his clothes. Only the wet feel of his penis reminded him that he had had sex. He returned to his study and began his memo on why they should fund the Uptown Theater’s workshop of its next musical.

“ Do you like it when I touch you there?” Larry had asked, and little Peter couldn’t answer. His small throat had closed. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t defend himself. “Do you like it when I touch you there?” Larry had asked .

Peter put the paper aside. Why am I thinking of this now? He hadn’t worried over his friend Gary’s cousin Larry for a decade, hadn’t worried about the minor incident (it was minor, he reminded himself) of sexual abuse.

Peter decided it was his nerves, the strangeness of sleeping with Diane after such a momentous event, even though this wasn’t their first postbaby intercourse, but the second. It’ll pass, he told himself.

What can I do about it now anyway?

Do you like it when I touch you there? Larry had asked the choked and mute child Peter .

No, I don’t, the man Peter answered.

IN MID-JULY, Eric and Nina gave up any attempt to live normally while caring for Luke. Their son’s restlessness, the constant discomfort in his belly allowed them no relaxation, even during the brief times they slept. In the back of their minds, irritating and corrosive, was the worry that Luke would never be right, never easy.

Eric and Nina had conceived in hope, convinced that the creation of their child would give life meaning and beauty. By the fifth week after Luke’s birth, the treasured mutual joy of Nina’s pregnancy, the keen anticipation of birth had become a grim struggle with Luke’s unhappy nature. Nina had given up internal hope that day in Grace Church. She was now addicted to Eric’s repeated assertions that if they held on, Luke would be all right. In thrall to Eric’s assurance that their self-sacrifice would eventually heal Luke, Nina turned off her ego and became an automaton, feeding, cleaning, rocking, her mind a blank, a bulb burning bright, in a race to complete its task before the final blowout.