Ali Eteraz - Native Believer

“Five feet? She might even be shorter than that,” she said.

“She’s skinny, isn’t she?”

Marie-Anne bit into my neck. “Skinnier than any black girl I’ve seen.”

“She’s actually a mix.”

Marie-Anne bit again. “Crafted like a ballerina. An ice skater.”

“I think she used to be a gymnast. Now she wants to be an actress.”

“Tell me where I run into her.”

I knew where she wanted to go and cleared my throat to take her there. But I was still caught up in my encounter with George. I straightened up a little, stiffened my back, and turned to try to talk about the incident at the bookshelf; but Marie-Anne didn’t let me start. She was in that tipsy place. She put a finger on my lip and put her mouth on mine. My protestation became passion. I kissed for a while and pulled my mouth free to give her the bedtime story she wanted.

In it Marie-Anne was a vampire queen, the mistress of a sector of Philadelphia, assigned by the vampire high command to convert pretty little girls to darkness. “You see Candace at the gym,” I said. “You are doing the elliptical. She’s in the dance area. Glass separates you. She is dressed in stockings and a leotard. Her hair is up in a bun. Her skinny neck is exposed.”

“Her clavicle is thin. Breakable.” Marie-Anne started sucking on my neck. Then she rolled back and lifted her leg for a moment so I could turn around and face her. She gave me a little kiss and with both of her hands on the top of my head pushed me down until my mouth was latched onto her breasts. She took a pillow and put it between her legs. I suckled and periodically glanced up at her.

“You are sweaty and hot after your workout. You go into the dance studio to stare at her. She is stretching with her leg up on the bar. Suddenly she loses her balance and you rush forward to grasp her. You hold her, you keep her upright. You inhale her scent. She is overwhelmed by your scent.”

“My tits. ”

“Your big tits press against her back. You hold her small body in your arms. You tell her she is safe.”

“I tell her she is tiny.”

“Yes,” I licked her nipple, “you tell her she’s tiny. A toy.”

“She’s a doll.”

I licked harder. “You know what to do with dolls.”

Marie-Anne nodded and increased her pace. “I know what to do with dolls. They are to be played with.”

“Do you play with her?”

“I take her home. I play with her. All the people see me leave with her. All the men. All the men were staring at her. All the black men and all the white men. They all want her. All the big swinging dicks. But I take her.”

“Do you play with your doll in your bed?”

Marie-Anne’s thighs squeezed harder on the pillow and she rocked faster. “I throw my leg over her like I throw my leg over you and suck on her tongue.”

“What else do you suck on?”

“I suck on her neck,” she growled. “I suck on her neck. I bite into her neck. She is afraid. She is afraid I will bite into her jugular. I will drink her blood.”

“Are you converting her?”

“I am converting her. I’m showing her I’m her boss. I’m showing her she can’t show herself off to anyone but me.”

“And she will know you are her—”

“Mistress!” Marie-Anne screamed her trigger word. Whenever she uttered it I knew my job was to start licking her nipple even harder, to clamp onto her erogenous point with puckered lips and teasing tongue and not let up until she climaxed. The rest of the Candace story wouldn’t take place with words. It would take place inside Marie-Anne’s mind. Her eyes closed. Her mouth opened. She was in that imaginary bed with Candace, where Marie-Anne was the owner, where Marie-Anne was the empress. I licked. My mouth grew tired, still I licked. My tongue dried up, still I licked. My jaw hurt, still I licked. It wouldn’t be long now. Within her vision Marie-Anne would soon reach her desired apogee. The moment when her authority over Candace would be so immense that it would make her explode. I just had to keep licking, to do nothing surprising, to let her have a perfect mental encounter. Ballerinas. And dolls. And sluts. College girls who wore yoga pants with dirty words written across the backside. And interns in six-inch heels. And masseuses with tight little bodies. And innocent virgins brought into the realm of vampirism. Marie-Anne consumed them all, in this, our interpretation of sex. Marie-Anne clutched my head to her chest. I felt the tension in her thighs. And then there was no more, only the unreeling of her existence. A shudder. Then a harder shudder. And then she was still. She’d consumed Candace, chewed her up, turned her into wetness.

“Goddamn,” she said with a kind of ripple in her voice. “That was so perfect.”

“You’re perfect.”

“Your turn,” she said. My face was between her breasts. She considered them necessary and sufficient for me to climax.

I stroked. Because she didn’t take birth control for the weight gain it caused, I was expected to stay out of her. Condoms weren’t an option because I couldn’t stay hard in them. We had tried every kind.

I suckled and pumped. Marie-Anne encouraged with touching and cooing. Before long I was at the threshold. I made sure to angle myself so I spilled on her thighs and not between her legs. An accident like that would have messed up her buzz. The last thing she needed was a reminder of mortality.

Before she fell asleep Marie-Anne said that she liked how I was always willing to channel girls into our bed for her. She said it was my superpower.

I kissed her on her hand and told her she was my superpower.

* * *

I soon got up to take a shower.

Under the water I was calm because of the orgasm and thought about the party in a new light. I told myself that I had panicked for no reason and recited a couple of quotes by Nietzsche. He and Goethe, along with Wallace Stevens and Emily Dickinson, always had a calming effect on me. The dead poets represented the apex of Western wisdom, a revelation made not of light but of words, one that was approachable, which you could access because it was made by fallible beings instead of dropped down by faultless angels.

When I came out and dried myself, I did so in front of Marie-Anne’s volleyball picture. It reminded me of our origin story, and a good origin story, like the kind we had, was the best thing in the world.

I had met her in college, when she played volleyball at Emory and was called Hangtime. The name had to do with her aerial prowess. When she leapt there was a natural double-clutch in her body, a kind of belated twitch in the torso that allowed her to stay airborne far longer than any other player at the net. In volleyball terms this made her ideally suited to play the position of the destructive outside hitter. Just as everyone else would be coming down, her legs would fold a little and she would rise for a brief moment longer — a girl turned hovercraft — as her arm with the force of a trebuchet knocked the ball back into the court, leaving blisters on the hardwood. “Haaang-time, Haaaang-time,” the crowd would chant. For three years Marie-Anne led the conference in kills and regularly had as many blocks as Jackie Joao, the star Brazilian middle blocker who had an inch on Marie-Anne and weighed about twenty pounds less. It was rare for a joust — a loose-ball situation at the net — to go against Marie-Anne’s squad. Like an alert sentry on a medieval rampart she would push the ball down onto the heads of the opposition. At her best, Marie-Anne’s approach and jump were measured at nine foot eight. This would have allowed her to play for Division I powerhouses like Stanford and UCLA and possibly even take a shot at the Olympics. But the strike against her was that she had no high school experience, nor even any exposure to club play, and had not developed the necessary tactical agency to be part of a successful offensive system. Marie-Anne blamed her mother for keeping her “stunted.”