Tara Ison - Ball - Stories

So? So?

So, it just gets better and better, I tell him. The story is wonderful. It feels so real. You’re absolutely ready to go to script.

I should just throw it away and start all over, he says.

He looks morose, opens another beer. After getting the copies and the cheeseburgers, I’d stopped to pick up the imported kind of beer he likes, a brand from some former Soviet country.

I should just burn it, he says. Put it through a fucking shredder. He kicks at the stack of copies I’ve brought. I hate that fucking story, he says.

No, you don’t, I tell him. If you didn’t still care about it, you wouldn’t be so upset.

I reach over to pat him, soothe him, but he jerks away.

You don’t know what you’re talking about, he says.

I know that you’re talented and you’re creative and you’re disciplined, I say. I wish you believed me. I wish you believed in yourself more.

Jesus, he says. Well, hey, thanks for reading it, anyway. Thanks for taking the precious time away from your precious fucking schoolwork.

I’ve been available, I point out. You’re the one who’s been preoccupied.

He eats the last dim sum, scrapes up chili with a finger.

I made an apple tart for dessert, I tell him. Will you eat some? Or we can split an orange?

He doesn’t answer; I get up and find most of a gallon of chunky skim milk in the mini-fridge. I’d like to throw it away, scrub dried spills from the sink. I’d like to clean his toilet, vacuum the gritty blue shag carpet, but don’t want to make him mad.

You don’t eat enough fruit, I say.

Fuck off, Mother, he says. He eats the last mini-chimichanga, rubs his hand on his shirt.

You need the vitamins.

Unbelievable.

I just worry about you, that’s all. I care. I love you.

And that’s what you think love feels like? he says. But he’s smiling, and I know he actually thinks I’m wonderful, that he needs me for this, he just doesn’t know how to say it, how to express it.

So, are you at the library right now? He reaches over to slide his dirty fingers through my hair.

No, I’m studying at my friend Stacy’s.

Do you have a friend Stacy?

No.

Wow.

He moves aside the used, chili-stained Variety s and pushes me flat on the floor. I’ve been wanting and waiting for this for weeks, it feels like it’s been a long, long time. I flatten out for him, spread all open, and he starts making love to me, but it’s so gently I can barely feel him there. I try to get into a tighter angle, so there’s some torsion, some clash, but he adjusts with me and it’s all too smooth and loose. He strokes my face, he’s being so sweet, and I’ll never come this way. I need the edge first, the clench of muscle, before I can go slack. Maybe he’s worried the floor is too hard, maybe he’s worried about hurting me by accident. I nod my head at the bed, and he slips out to let me go first. We lock in again and keep going. Now he’s stroking my hair, so I cross my wrists overhead and nudge them under his other hand, hoping he’ll grip them hard, give them a twist. I push my head up under his stroking hand, hoping he’ll grasp and tug my hair, make me strain. But he seems to want us even, balanced, and I just give up. I let him gently lunge and stroke away, and watch the square of paneled ceiling, the rustle of the jumbled sheets. There’s a stain on the pillowcase next to my head, the kind of leak a thin brownish fluid might make. I wish I could get up and wash all the linens. But not to wash away any trace of her. Just because I don’t like the thought of him sleeping in soiled sheets.

BY NOW SHE’Ssoaped herself up and given me, or the masculine-initialed me, a virtual bubble bath; squatted over the camera and peed to virtually spatter me; squirted lube on her fingernail-filed hand and pantomimed a good reaming; had me tie myself up at ankles and wrists (hard to do); assigned me a variety of punishments involving food or lack of, or sustaining physical positions; told me to lick her boots; acted out giving me an enema; pretended to apply alligator clamps to my nipples; cracked a leather riding crop at what’s supposed to be my ass, my scrotum, the tender soles of my feet; mashed her breasts into the camera and told me to suck; told me to call her Mommy; told me I’m a bad, dirty little boy. She’s played with herself and taunted me with shiny fingers, told me I’m not allowed to touch, mustn’t touch Mommy, bad dirty little boys aren’t allowed to touch. She’s a good actress, but I find it all very unengaging, and I’m bewildered there are guys willing to pay for such things. I’m bewildered there are guys who are turned on by this. I’ve logged on once or twice a week, very late at night when I’m sure my father is asleep, for my Very SPECIAL, Hands-On QUALITY TIME, and I keep looking for more of her, trying to get her closer. At first I thought I saw swelling from the brow lift, maybe the barest puncture marks from the staples along her hairline, but she’s been wearing bangs and I can’t see much. Otherwise, she looks exactly the same as she always has. I’m at a loss for what else to request, how to keep it going. The degradations, the hurts, the playacting — it’s all getting so lackluster, so old.

Hi, honey , she says to me. She’s sitting spread-legged on a chair, her red hair tugged into a bun, a gladiator-sized leather belt across her waist. Long black gloves.

Hi, Mommy , I type back. I type with one hand, I’m eating an orange with the other.

Have you been a good little boy? Beneath the bangs, she raises her eyebrows at the camera, and I wonder how she can still do that after the brow lift.

Yes, Mommy , I type.

Oh, you have? And what have you been up to? she asks.

I can’t think of any scenarios. It’s very late, and I’m tired. I spit a seed out of my mouth onto a paper towel. Too tart, the acid first, then some sweet.

Are you sure you’ve been a good boy? Or are you lying to me ? she prompts.

No, Mommy. I wouldn’t lie to you.

Well, I think you are lying. And I don’t like it when you lie to me, you know that, don’t you? It hurts when you lie to me. She looks severe and yet, I realize, caring. Incredibly sincere. She cares a great deal whether I’ve been good or bad. And when I’m bad, it causes her pain.

Yes, I’m sorry. I’m lying, I’ve been bad.

Well, you know what that means, don’t you? She frowns, and I’m in thrall to her again, at what she must go through. You’ll have to know how much it hurts. You’ll have to be punished. But because I love you so much, I’m going to let you choose. She rises from the chair, opens a small cabinet that holds a variety of props. She removes a round blade of wood, like a pizza slide, like a large Ping-Pong paddle. How about this?

Spank me, Mommy . Of course, I think, we haven’t done that. So obvious. Why haven’t I just asked for that before?

Ah , she says. She puts the paddle back. That’s Mommy’s favorite, too.

She comes closer to the camera, slowly removing the gloves. She sits so that she’s only visible from the waist up, murmuring to me to drop my trousers, drop my underwear, lie down across her lap, That’s a good boy, no, a little higher, Mommy wants this bad little boy’s sweet behind a little higher , and I split open another orange. I hear a slapping sound, she must be whacking an open palm against her own thigh, just out of view. I spit out another seed — the problem with oranges, you have to fuss with seeds, with drip, so sticky, my father would always make me wash my hands afterward. The girlfriend keeps slapping away, This is good, and I wonder, for the first time, where the daughter is while her mother does all these shows. The late-at-night shows, she’s probably sleeping, sure, but what about during the day, when she gets home from school? And how does her mother explain all the equipment, the cabinet with the paddles and crops and enema bag? Has the little girl ever stumbled into this stuff, this special room, by accident? Here, let me stop, rub you a little, good. And did that make her mother angry, that her daughter maybe broke a rule, did something she wasn’t supposed to? I wonder if the mother disciplines her daughter, not like she disciplines her clients, of course, but she probably spanks her now and then. That’s part of being a parent. Part of being the child. Maybe the little girl’s father, the ex-husband, is in charge of discipline. My father was, even before my mother left, he was usually the one to handle spanking. Now that doesn’t hurt too much, honey, does it? Maybe I should do it harder, then, like this? I imagine the little girl’s father stroking her hair, kissing her, telling her he has to do this, punish her, she’s been bad, telling her to pull up her skirt, pull down her panties, lie across his lap, just like my father. Like this, this? I’ve finished the orange but my hand is so sticky, I have to lick each finger one by one. Bent over his lap in a tense hunch, crying, at first, everything clenched, panties around my ankles like soft rope, the jolting slaps like awful gripping sunburn, like growing blaze, Believe me, sweetheart, this hurts me more than it hurts you, me crying and pleading, my body giving up into a drape, but he’d finally stop, when I was finally beyond hurt and fully loose.