My eyes blush back to her. It was just she was climbing onto a bicycle, the crotch of her little pants just for a moment, every fold like the fold of her skin, climbing on.
Grisaille is smiling, though.
—but maybe, Cole, not when I am actually talking to you.
• •
—You know that girl Jana? She draws amazing.
—Yeah, I know her.
—Amazing. She was showing me about shading. See, look at the coffee cup. Wait. This one. I’m pretty proud of it. She showed me, see, how to make it, like down here, so the shadow kind of rounds it out.
—Wow.
I never thought of her like that. Grisaille looks at me, guesses it out.
—Her, too?
—We didn’t, it was just one night at a party. We didn’t sleep together.
—But you tried?
—I don’t know. It didn’t happen.
She shut the sketchbook and put her hands down on it.
—She draws really, really well.
—I didn’t even know you then.
—I know, Cole. I was just hoping there was someone who, I could find someone you haven’t messed with.
I told Grisaille again that I didn’t even know her then. And, did not add: still feel like that sometimes.
• •
She’s on her stomach with her hands stretched out in front of her. I’m putting my clothes on. Her armpits, hairy, and her skin all the way down, is actually making me ache, an actual ache. She turns her head and her eyes are wet. Shit, crying?
—What’s wrong?
—Nothing.
—What’s,
—Nothing.
She says something in another language, I don’t even know which one. She watches me not get it. —It’s an expression. Who can I complain to, if I don’t like the shape of the globe?
—Are you, did I,
She’s almost disgusted at me. —It’s not you, Cole. Everything in my head isn’t what you do. I just miss him.
—Him who?
—Them. Them. Everybody.
• •
Maybe it’s the town and everything, everyone in it. I’m not Portugal, nothing around here is Portugal. I run the longer trail, frowning at the puzzle of it, that I might be the apple or something of her eye, but that she is the whole horizon, everything I can look at and see.
Onscreen like always she’s —Sorry about before.
—OK.
—Really. I think I’m getting sick is all.
I give her a smile but the stretch, the gap, the bridge that falls through sometimes even when it’s built back up. We built it, everything almost we have, from sex, all the dirty parts are almost all the parts. It feels like enough when we’re having it. But there are other times too. I can only pin her down, it scares me to realize I think this, when I’m pinning her down.
• •
Three days Grisaille’s out. I feel like I’m on false legs, trying to laugh around with people I haven’t really paid attention to lately. Lost and leashless. Alec won’t even tell me to fuck off. Run longer. Actually ace a quiz. Draw something, badly at first and then maybe not so terrible, a piece of paper I then fold up for no reason and then, again, alone at the screen, too early for sleep, hello girls.
• •
Here they are near a swimming pool, in neighboring chairs that tilt way back. Her fingernails look too long to feel good inside her but she has two of them deep. The tans are ridiculous so I don’t know why it works. Her nipples, the angle of her legs on his shoulders. I don’t think of how uncomfortable it would be on those chairs. I think of Grisaille’s chest, and how good it feels to come on her.
• •
Lots of babysitter ones. So many that everyone’s dad must have watched one at least. Alana used to babysit a lot.
• •
Grisaille’s back coming through the door. I don’t like how nervous I am about it, how wide I can feel my grin after the kiss is over. Her teeth are hungry on mine. —I really, really really missed you.
It is Grisaille saying this. I am embarrassed that I am grateful.
• •
—My mom’s got it now, what I had. She’s sick.
—That sucks.
—For us, yeah. Where can we go, where is there?
• •
Well, I haven’t had an orgasm by these bleachers for a while.
• •
Compare and contrast the two treaties of Bucharest and finally getting to fuck in a bed again with your girlfriend tonight. Give examples. Give us the details.
• •
She is scooting over me, breathing odd, in the position girls usually do to dollop their breasts in your mouth one by one. But she keeps on, her chest passing by with a warm slide of the skin, until she drops her belly onto my mouth. It’s salty on my tongue, smooth and gurgly. She is laughing now. —Eat my belly! Behold it! Worship the belly!
I realize what it is, the salt I’m tasting, but I go crazy on it anyway until she’s yelping, shimmying, each eek a super delight.
• •
—Give me a hint.
—Rhymes with funalingus.
• •
Her hands on my ass pushing me deeper and for a second Alec is there in my head, in my cock.
—You came quick when I did that.
She’s watching me, blinking. I pretend, to kill the moment, I’m taking a bow.
• •
—There’s my beautiful wife.
The guy’s in the lobby of the multiplex. We’re both waiting outside the ladies room. He’s old, but beautiful wife, I take it, means they’re still fucking.
• •
—Do you want to go to Greta’s?
She yawns a little. —Whatever. I’m easy.
—I know.
Her eyes go dark right quick. —I mean it. Don’t ever. You’re pretty easy yourself, but I bet nobody says it, yes?
—Yes. They say I have a rep.
—For a boy, that’s like a medal. Or maybe a hat, like even if you don’t like it, it’s just something he wears. For girls, it’s like, she’s a ruin, stay away from her.
—It’s not like that. People get mad at me too. Girls I’ve been with, their friends, it’s like a minefield.
—Not the same. You know Allison? Never mind, of course you do. She won’t talk to me hardly, and we’re next to each other in three classes, because she knows we’re fucking.
—That’s nuts. All the guys she’s been with, she needs all the friends she can get.
Her eyes do it again. —This is what I mean, Cole.
• •
I have a who-knows-where thought on a run, that I wish Alec could watch us. Just in a corner of the room. His cock in his hands. But when I think about looking at his face, I can’t go on, and sprint it, fast fast faster until I’m panting too hard to even have it in my head anymore.
• •
—OK I did some gay stuff but I don’t feel gay about it.
—Tell me what stuff.
—OK but don’t tell anyone.
—Well I’m a guy on a random anonymous chat. Think you’re safe.
• •
She is having her period again. It is true, a true thing obviously I cannot mention. Another true thing is, she is crying very hard over an orange she unpeeled and it turned out to be moldy. I’m walking around her like a hummingbird until she makes me sit down. She tries to laugh, and cries harder. She tries to say something, and hiccups in the middle; I lean in to try to hear whatever it is her mouth is saying. She kisses me instead, her lips sloppy from weeping, hiccupy again but her hands are already running down my body. I’m in her before my shirt is off, my socks on my feet against her socks on her feet. She bites my shoulder and tears a rip I’ll always see. But no one else will.
• •
So, with Alec, I give up, I guess. How long with typing to him without answer, before I don’t even think to do it? What’s there to say about i
t except, I’m straight and I like girls, and it was just whatever it was?
Keep finding porn he would like, and can’t send it to him.
• •
On the floor I see some drawings she half-made, a couple flowers, some guy’s chin over and over, stubbly, the windowsill so clear for a minute it looks like a photo. She’s not even taking a class, and me with my assigned sketchbook I don’t even know where it is. The chin is mine, I realize, I think, I think.
• •
I’m telling you she started it, a whisper one night with both hands on me up and down.
—Would you fuck another girl?
I could do nothing but pretend not to hear her.
—Tell me.
But I was already harder in her hands. She climbed up with a long kiss, moving her hips, the tip of my cock just barely inside her. —Would you—
—Stop.
—fuck another girl?
—Yes.
She plunged onto me. —A first-year.
—What?
—You know, at school. Do you look at them?
—We don’t call them first-years.
—Do you? You do look at them.
I leaned up to bite her shoulder a little but she growled away. —I know you look at them all the time. Wait.
Her hands pressed my shoulders back down and she made it slow. —I want you to.
—What?
—Tonight, tonight. I want you to find a girl at this party, and fuck her.
—Jesus.
She climbed off me and I had trembles like never before. Her eyes looked like a demon in a poster. She locked in to stare at me, her hand quick down her body and busy between her legs.
—You’re crazy.
—Find her …
She said it over the sound of it, in and out of her own self. —Find her, Cole and, no, I will pick her out.
—Grisaille!
—and fuck her.
I came with nobody touching me, a wet firework in the air. I heard it patter down on us and she came too. We said nothing for the rest of the song fading out.
—Were you serious?
She wouldn’t look at me. —Yes.
—What is this?
—It’s just something I want, Cole. It—
—It turns you on?
—It turns me on so much.
And her hand was already on me again and I was fierce and striving with it. —You’re so hard. I love your cock hard, Cole.
But she peeled off me and stood shouldering into her bra, the sunset in the window blazing a ragey scarlet behind her back. It was still early, but the way we were talking about it, felt already too late.
—Come back.
—No. I want to save it. I want you to save it for her.
I rolled the other way and saw an empty bottle on her desk, the usual Spanish or something wine they had cases of. But did she open it tonight, was my question now. Did she finish it alone. —I really want this, Cole.
—This is fucked up.
She was in the mirror with lipstick. Her hair was tousled, untamed. It looked fucked, like we’d been fucking. —There’s nothing fucked up about it. They look at you, Cole, they want something. Give it to them.
—Are you really serious?
—Get dressed. I’ll open a wine.
• •
It was glaring busy inside the party. Kristen, not a lot of people I knew. Grisaille raised her eyes at some girl with braids and another, with her friend, dancing overwild to a song not cool enough for the rest of everybody. And then nervous on a couch, blonde and her eyes painted girly with too much care, too excited for the party, looking around with a big red plastic cup of something, her cheeks flushing, that she’d probably never had before. Grisaille was in my ear with it, licking and whispering. She went to fix three gin and tonics, limes bobbing and sliced too big, so strong the music warbled just with the first sip. —I wish I could watch.
She was slurring like a creature, but we are creatures. The teacher said it in Art, we are creatures, a big wild painting of sinners and punishments with everyone looking like an animal. Monsters sometimes. I felt my smile start up as I walked toward her, crawling up my face like fish hooks were doing it. But it was me. I did it. I did her. There is no way, I cannot between ravage and tonic forget the details.
—Hey.
—Hi.
She was grateful not to be alone. But I just asked if there was room on the couch, and, —What’s your name? I’m Cole.
—Yeah, everybody knows you.
—I have a rep, I guess.
She laughed at how I shrugged off how dangerous she knew me to be. She was nice, she was smiling, Courtney she was almost shouting in my ear over the speakers near us on the mantel. Some talk about a thing onscreen everyone’s sharing. Move my arm round. Move her arm around. Legs rubbing a little by accident, on purpose. Courtney biting her lip and spoiling her makeup.
Upstairs, it was some little girl’s room. Cartoon sheets. The kiss was sweet and fluttery, so wrong for what I was doing. She held my head to kiss me more, it felt like a skull. She unbuttoned her own shirt, with help, slipped down her pants with a silky scarf she’d rigged as a belt. Her eyes were shiny and flat, though, glassy like in old museum tableaus. Endangered species. Another kiss that was nothing but gin and spit, and her hands, both of them, between my legs too rough but not too rough not to work. My pants locked chain-gang around my ankles, so I stopped. To kick off my shoes, I stopped. My hand already had the condom Grisaille had found and put in my pocket, but it still felt like there was something up for grabs, a shaky question in the air. She was sitting up a little, to kiss me again or maybe to leave, a fierce kiss on the mouth.
—Do you want to?
And then,
—Are we good?
is what I muttered against her, and she nodded and nodded, fast like chattering teeth. And then her grunts, harsh, and my name, Cole, but no other words, not stop, not anything. A tight fuck quick. Definitely not no, neither of us said that. Our mouths kept busy doing anything but no. These details scraping at me, telling not even myself what happened, and with are you OK? and Yeah OK I was back in the hallway, downstairs with my shoes still untied. Grisaille was very drunk, alone on a folding chair they’d backed into a corner, almost passed out.
—You smell like her.
—Let’s go home.
Her kiss was fast, very ferocious. —You are so fucking hot, you make me almost—
I didn’t like my voice. —Let’s. Go. Home.
The street was filthy, after a storm. My mind smelled of it. I had not, exactly, agreed exactly to do this, but now, wasn’t it, it was done. Neither of us got sick, not enough drunk even to be sick in our homes when we separated to stumble the rest of the way. But we were, weren’t we, sick, both of us, sick creatures with our tricks.
Courtney, I thought, unshowered in bed, sticky and too quivery inside to sleep. Sickened the most by Grisaille’s murmur in my ear, as slippery as the rest of her all night, next time it’s mine. The next turn, such a terrible whisper, belongs to me. I felt blacked out but I didn’t black out. I know every detail, I’m sorry, forever with every other dirty thing rolled up and riled in my brain and cock. Are we good? Just because I’m not listing it, just because—Alec in my head—I’m not telling every detail, doesn’t mean I wasn’t there thrilled and queasy fucking her for all of it.
• •
So, thirteen now, is the number.
• •
—Can we talk about it?
—What part?
I make my fingers stop twitching over the keys. The part I didn’t like, I want to tell her. The part making me pace around with loud music. But I just ask if I can come over and I run there sweaty and hard to do it quick leaving me still thirsty, or something. Rattly. Sad. What rope can you lower to get me out of here?
• •
—And if I fucked another boy?
She’s still straddling me. In a second my
cock will wilt up and slip out of her like a water balloon. —What other boy are we talking about?
She laughs. We drop it. Thank God.
• •
—Is something bothering you?
This is my mother saying this. I slam off. —Yes.
• •
It’s like drinking, I want to tell someone. I am running because there’s no one to tell. You drink too much sometimes, learning to do it right, the way you want. Courtney, it’s the same with how you learn to fuck. Until you figure it out, you’re going to be sick some mornings.
• •
—It’s not fair, Cole, but OK.
—I just didn’t like it.
The window rattles. It’s late. —But you fucked her anyway, right? So why can’t—
—You can’t. I don’t. Please don’t. Please won’t you—
and I’m quiet but still saying it out loud in my skull. I knew, I told myself and I told myself. I knew you weren’t safe.
• •
Like lightning in my spine it’s that sudden. I’m midsentence in the overflowing kitchen.
—What?
I shake my head, gesture to Jeremy like a wall fell down in front of my face. My beer tastes strange, bad, and I move sweaty, like I already know it. I don’t even ask anyone as I scowl around the living room, but Alec’s eyes are on me, very black, very bright. I think later he must have known right then, but right then I tell myself I don’t know anything. Up the stairs and the landing and the other stairs. Fling open one wrong door, the bathroom, the closet, door after door, too stupid and too frantic. I don’t like the sounds I’m either hearing or making. And the stripe of light rectangles onto Grisaille on the older brother’s bed. Jack has his pants off and she’s kissing his neck until they turn around to face me. Her face is a bright, a little sweaty, a little shame. But her hand doesn’t move from around his thick cock.
• •
—I thought it was sexy.
—Yeah, obviously.
—Cole. Like a game. Like with the first-year.
My voice is so spitty I hate it myself. —We don’t even call it that in America.
—Cole.
—
—Cole. I’m leaving anyway. At the end of the semester.
I’m choking something up. —Did he feel better than me?
—How do I know how he felt?
—Was it better?
She kicks the ground. Her hands are clenched and I can’t stop seeing them around his cock. Bigger than mine. —I just thought it was fun.
All the Dirty Parts Page 6
