I’m heartbroken. But most of all, I want someone to eat my pussy the way he did, all day, every day, around the clock.
I miss simultaneous coolness and warmth of a tongue and lips against the slickness of my labia, I miss running my hands through someone’s hair.
The space between my legs feels lonelier and colder and emptier than the hole in my chest.
I want to squeeze a stubbly jaw between my legs, and feel a tongue in the ridges where my thighs and my pelvis meet.
I want to pull myself up by my legs on the broad back of someone else, and impress myself with how strong I am.
So I go hunting.
With another girl, of course.
She’s older, gorgeous, all cascading brown curls and giant gold hoops. I’m quiet in a rock band T-shirt and a short skirt made of baby-blue terrycloth. She introduces me to the band at a place where we like to go dancing, because the drinks are always free.
As the baby, I’m meant to pair off with the drummer, also youngest of his group. They’ve just arrived from Cuba. He has sweet brown eyes and lean, muscled arms, and I generally like his energy, he’s soft and curious and smells good.
But he hasn’t touched me yet. We go to the apartment they are sharing after to eat and drink. Drummer boy is talking to me about his family after the night is over - we are sitting together on a love seat, we are the only two non-smokers. He has yet to make a move. The pianist has been eyeing me all night, his eyes hungry and glittering in the dark and following me around the dance floor even when I’m dancing with someone else, even as he’s playing.
Piano man walks over to us, takes my arm, and wordlessly leads me to the bedroom.
I don’t know what the drummer boy makes of it, but he doesn’t protest, and he doesn’t follow. I wish he would. Either would work.
Piano man takes off my shirt, my skirt, and looks at me slowly, taking me in. He takes off his pants, gently moves me in front of him, and brings me to my knees.
“Suck me,” the first words I’ve ever heard from him.
I like his voice, it reminds me of leaves rustling underfoot.
I do.
It feels like dancing. I’m being led, not pushed or pulled or clung to, all reasons why even for the slow dances, I preferred dancing on my own. Every boy and man in the world I’d ever danced with found it necessary to push, to pull, to grab, to cling.
I want to come on my own, with my own force. He knows.
I let myself go, and let him channel me. He leads, barely speaking, no pushing, just sensing the invisible knot tying the middle of me to the middle of him. Now tighter, now looser. But always there.
He puts me down on the bed, not gently, but without violence. An economy of movement that speaks to an integrity and purity of our physical bodies, if not our intentions. He has turned my body into an extension of his, locked in. He goes down on me, and gives me one of his rare, scheming smiles when his long, strong pianist fingers find me beyond wet.
I wrap my legs around his shoulders, squeeze his neck, his jaw, grasp at his hair. He doesn’t break contact, not even for a moment.
Just as I’m beginning to grind hard against his face, as is my custom, he stops and runs his tongue up my body. He licks me all over, like a mother lion licks a sleepy newborn cub to life.
I’m warm, I’m pulsating, I am born, I am coming to life.
Belly to belly, we lift the unspoken weight of fear, confusion, anxiety, and grief off each other’s backs. His of arriving, mine of departing. Just for a white.
I am his pet, his emotional support animal. He is an indulgent, if quiet owner. He brings me to rehearsals, feeds me from his plate as I sit on his lap, kisses my neck, bites my shoulder, holds the straw of his drink to my mouth, lies between my legs and traces the notes in his mind on the inside of my calf, taps melody and harmony into my torso as if my flank is a keyboard, lying between my legs on the dance floor between sets, humming to himself in my ear.
He puts two cigarettes into my mouth and makes me light them and give him one. He hasn’t checked if I smoke. I don’t, usually. But he likes it when his pet tastes of nicotine and hunger.
We don’t speak much, if at all. I disappear completely from the rest of my life.
I sleep naked in his bed, his roommate tactfully waits a few minutes after my shuddering cry and his ferocious growl before coming in, and shuffles out drowsily in the mornings before I throw the blankets off me.
The singer, a beautiful woman who sings barefoot and scolds the men in a sisterly tone, tries to engage me in conversation about school or hobbies. I feel too wrung out to talk, so she gives up. I do what he wants - sleep, and dance, and fuck.
Weeks later, I leave because it’s time to move. New city.
I don’t tell him I’m leaving, because it seems weird to start talking all of a sudden after three weeks of barely speaking.
He doesn’t have my number, I don’t have his, I know we have no way of finding each other again once I leave.
Except.
I think of him every day doing homework in my new room. The craving becomes overwhelming, I book myself a train ticket for Thanksgiving break.
The city has changed, and so has the night, the dancers. The hot summer air has turned into frigid winter. The crowd is distinctly older, they don’t dance the way we used to dance, they take well-trained, coordinated steps, but without intention, without purpose, without integrity. It’s coordination, not collaboration.
I run into my friend’s dad, but he doesn’t know that I’m her friend because dads never do. He tries to pick me up and brags about his kids. I dance with him once, and his knees knock awkwardly into mine, he pushes me around the dance floor and holds me too tightly. He blocks my turns aggressively and clumsily, tries to make me turn the other way.
I find piano man upstairs, after. He’s surprised. He whispers, “I’m living with someone,” I shrug, easy, “No pasa nada, baby.”
He is caught off guard, he doesn’t know, after all this time, that I speak Spanish. He will never know the books on my shelf that I’ve read about prostitutes and magical realism and boiling chocolate and amphetamines and ritual sacrifice, the poetry, the music. We will never discuss the state of the Spanish economy and our favourite Latin American dictators.
I steer him to the deserted upstairs bar, the one meant just for the talent.
My turn.
I keep my clothes on, a black sweater and a short skirt and fishnets, because I know what my body does to a man. I want him to feel it. Full throttle.
I yank off his pants, and he doesn’t object or can’t find the words. He’s already hard. I lick the salty tip of his penis, and then take in more and more of his shaft, stroke the underside with my tongue, cup his balls, then suck them, first alternating and then both.
He is shaking under my touch, like I used to shake in his hands.
I grip his ass like he used to hold onto mine, driving him all the way into my throat as he gasps for air.
He comes. It doesn’t take long. It’s a good, long, hard one that fills my mouth and sends ripples through his body long after. He is holding onto my shoulders for support. He has lost his knees. I feel like I’ve taken back something I accidentally left on his bedside table. I swallow and let out a big, beautiful moan from deep inside.
I stand up, leave him with his pants down. Give him a big kiss, have a drink from the bottle of water that’s still in his hand, and leave.
I go home on the train the next morning.
My parents are obviously freaking out.
I feel holy.
No parece leo ni escorpio, pa' mí que ella tiene su propio signo
Fría, sentimental, está en temporada de portarse mal
A vece' es difícil meditar y solo quiere gritar
O buscarme pa' chingar y yo se lo voy a dar a la hora que sea
If I’ve got you all hot and bothered, you know what to do. Don’t be afraid. My yoke is easy and my burden is light: https://throne.com/nagaramama