Thirty Hours: a semi memoir of psychosis and love
Page 17
You looked at me with skeptically squinted gray eyes. “Promise?”
“I promise.”
You studied my face for another moment or two before you smirked and then a look of utterly over-the-top flirtatiousness overtook your expression.
“Are you sure you don’t have serious feelings for me, Seth?” you asked, mocking me, sliding closer, and tilting your chin toward me.
Once again, I should’ve been tipped off. Instead, I was thoroughly distracted by the game you were suddenly playing and decided to join you.
“I don’t have feelings of any kind for you, Charlie,” I said, staring at your mouth and then at your eyes while you climbed onto my lap. “Serious or otherwise.”
“Good. You should keep it that way,” you said. “You know, for your own good. I’m a total heartbreaker, Seth. I would totally break your heart.”
Your ass is pretty much non-existent, but there’s a little something there and it was enough for me to grab and pull you closer. “You’re a heartbreaker, huh?”
“Totally.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
Your hair was even longer by that point and it was tickling the backs of my hands and I got a sudden urge to touch it. I’d only touched it once before that moment and it was even softer and thicker than I remembered. I had two fistfuls of it and a feeling like I could hold onto it for the rest of my life. I gave it a little tug to bring your face closer to mine.
“You’re not capable of breaking anything, especially not hearts. Especially not mine.”
“You’re pulling my hair,” you said, and then spoke with your lips against my ear. “I like it.”
I gave it another tug, firmer this time. “You like having your hair pulled?”
“Oh yes. I love it.”
“That’s kind of kinky for an alleged virgin.”
You laughed. “No, it’s not. It feels good on my scalp.”
I pulled again, tilting your head back toward the sky. “Yeah, right. I’m starting to think the whole virgin thing is bull.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re in my lap again. What kind of virgin constantly straddles a guy’s lap?”
You tilted your head back toward me, causing your hair to slip through my fingers like a skein of spun silk. “The only guy’s lap I’ve ever straddled is yours.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know, Charlie.” I was teasing you, but I don’t think you realized that. “I think you’re full of shit. I bet you lost your virginity in high school like everyone else.”
“Well…” You tiptoed your little chipped-black-polish fingernails up the buttons on my shirt until they arrived at my chin, which you pushed to one side to make room for you to rest your head on my shoulder. “There’s only one way to find out.”
I laughed quietly; nervously. I didn’t want to say anything that might indicate feelings of any kind about that. Although, I did notice my fingertips rubbing and grasping the small of your back, seemingly on their own accord. And you smelled like lavender, which was disorienting because I knew there was lavender in this garden, but it wouldn’t bloom until the summer.
That day was one of those random warm January days; about 75 degrees and beautiful. And you smelled good and you felt good, and there wasn’t a single other person in the garden that morning, and we were talking about sex and fuck me, it was irresistible. But I didn’t say anything. I just kissed the corner of your forehead, which was conveniently close to my lips.
“So you lost your virginity in high school?” you murmured.
“I did. I was seventeen.”
“Was it good?”`
“Uhh…” I shrugged. “I guess.”
"You guess?"
"Yeah. I mean, I thought it was good, but I don't know if I was very good. If you know what I mean.” I paused and tickled your ribs, which were still very easy to locate through both your clothing and your skin. “And since you're allegedly a virgin you probably don't."
"No, I know what you mean."
"So you're not really a virgin, are you?" I tickled you again to show I was teasing, although this was wishful thinking on my part. It would have made things so much easier. If you weren’t a virgin, I’m pretty sure the deed would have been done a while before that day in the garden. And maybe also that day in the garden. Maybe even right there on the bench because damn.
"I am a virgin, but I understand what you mean. So why weren't you very good?"
"It was my first time. I didn't know what I was doing. In fact, I didn't do anything at all."
"What?” you asked with a giggle so cute I smiled. “How is that possible?"
I shrugged again. "She did all the work."
"How?"
"Because she was straddling my lap." I tickled you a third time and we laughed.
"So that's why you like this so much."
"What do you mean?"
"Every time I sit on you like this you get an erection,” you said clinically enough that it shouldn’t have turned me on even further, but it did anyway. “An erection starts in your brain. Something you saw, felt, smelled, heard, thought, or in this case, a memory of the first time you had sex makes your nerves send chemical messages to the blood vessels in your penis. Your arteries relax and open up to let more blood flow in. At the same time, the veins close up. Once blood is in your penis, pressure traps it within the corpora cavernosa. Your penis expands and holds the erection. When the inflow of blood stops and the veins open, your penis becomes soft.”
Spot on, except it has nothing to do with that memory and everything to do with the fact that you’re sitting on my cock, I wanted to say, but didn’t. “So that’s what you’re learning in school, huh?”
You shrugged. “It’s in my A and P textbook.”
“And you read about it.”
You shrugged again and giggled. “What can I say? I’m curious. I’d never seen a penis before and it has pictures.”
I had to laugh. “I guess you really are a virgin then.”
“Totally a virgin, Seth.”
“I bet you know more about the technical aspects of a hard-on than most non-virgins. That’s impressive.”
You laughed and kissed me and slid off my lap, and that was always a disappointment. But as it turned out, this particular time your curiosity was compelling you to do something that was basically the opposite of disappointing.
“I also read that it causes pain if you don’t ejaculate to relieve an erection.”
I nodded. “It does.”
“So after I read that, I felt kind of bad for all those times you left my house with one.”
“It’s okay, Charlie.” I almost said, don’t worry, I always take care of it when I get home, but you didn’t need to know that.
And in this particular instance it wasn’t going to be necessary because your lips were on my neck and your hands were unfastening my jeans.
“So, when you're aroused,” you said, and I was breathing quickly, grasping your hair, and frantically looking around to make sure we were still alone because you were suddenly, slowly using your hands to demonstrate your new knowledge of the male sex organ, “tubes called the vas deferens squeeze sperm from the testes toward the back of the urethra. The seminal vesicles also release fluid there and the urethra senses the sperm and fluid mixture.”
You paused to kiss my mouth, but your hands were still working. “Your penis is much more attractive than the one in the book, by the way.”
I dropped my head backward. “Oh my God.”
You giggled, kissed my neck, and continued. “Then… at the height of sexual excitement… it sends signals to your spinal cord, which in turn sends signals to the muscles at the base of your penis.” I think one of your hands was right there as you described it and I’d stopped caring about whether or not anyone else was in the garden because God damn, for a virgin, you were really fucking good at this.
/> Your hands were moving quickly and you spoke into my neck between more kisses, and I tried to breathe quietly because your very clinical explanation was the hottest, dirtiest thing anyone had ever said to me and I didn’t want to miss one word of it.
“The muscles contract… powerfully… quickly… every zero... point… eight… seconds,” you murmured. “This forces the semen out of your penis… as you climax.”
And just as I was about to, and just before I could grunt the words, Charlie, I’m gonna cum, your mouth was right there to catch it. My thirtieth birthday was right around the corner and fuck if you didn’t just give me an early present. Every bit of hassle you’d ever inflicted upon me was suddenly more than worth it because then you swallowed like a fucking champ, and marriage was suddenly on my radar because I. Fucking. Love. You.
But, “Holy shit,” was all I could muster.
“I think I’m going to do well on my test next week,” you said as if we were casually conversing. You turned to me as I put everything away and closed up shop. “Don’t you think so, Seth?”
“Uh.”
“You okay?”
“I think your test is going to go great,” I said, mostly to the space in front of my eyes.
You gripped my chin and made me look at you. “I mean, are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
I jostled my head because okay was woefully insufficient. “I’m more than okay. That was… like…”
“I don’t want you getting too attached to me, Seth McCollum.”
“I’m not.”
“Are you sure?”
“Swear.”
You made an unconvinced face and despite the fact you just jerked me off in a modern-day Garden of Eden, I was defensive again and said something else that was a huge mistake. “Come on, Charlie. I’m almost thirty years old. You’re not the first woman to do that to me and I never got attached to any of them.”
“And you’re not going to get attached to me,” you prompted.
I chuckled. “I swear I will not get attached to you.”
I pretty much believed myself, but that didn’t stop me from lifting you back onto my lap, grabbing fistfuls of your hair, pulling it, and kissing you harder and deeper than I ever had before.
I told myself I wouldn’t get attached to you, but it was my favorite day with you up until that point, and not just because of the obvious. Although, that was part of it. I look back on that afternoon and despite the weird banter—despite your preoccupation with me not getting attached to you and my defensiveness about I don’t know what—it felt so fun and frisky and normal. The way I imagine this would’ve been had we ever been normal.
But maybe this is all retrospective wishful thinking because if it had really made me as happy as I’m remembering it did, why hadn’t I done something to change where we are now?
I can tell twenty-six hours straight of this is loosening my grip on reality because I feel like I can’t even trust my own memory now.
Can any of us ever trust our own memory? After all, isn’t that just our own biased version of whatever happened? We can’t be sure of what really happened until we get the accounts of several other eyewitnesses and the only other eyewitness in this situations is—you guessed it—you. And a lot of help you are right now.
Anyway, whatever. It was one of those times I felt happy. I wasn’t entirely sure about your preoccupation with me not getting attached to you, but I figured that was just your youth and personal insecurity and inexperience melding together to form an emotional defense mechanism. That seemed completely reasonable because I had one of my own known as my expectations.
Maybe I wasn’t going to marry you, and maybe I wasn’t your boyfriend, but we were definitely together in some capacity, and I had every reason to believe we’d be together for a while. Maybe not even a really long while, but at least for a lot longer than it ended up being.
Hour Twenty-Seven
On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays you left for class at 2:30 PM and that was usually when you called me. Sometimes you called at 2:45 PM. Sometimes at 2:15, and you shouted at me over the sound of the blow dryer. Sometimes you called me at 3:55 PM before you went to your second class. Or at 4:55. Or at 5:55, or at 6:55, or at 8:10 PM when you were about to head home. Sometimes you called at each of those times. Sometimes only a couple of them. But you usually called at 2:30, and you always called.
It was a Friday about two weeks after our little moment in the Botanic Gardens that you didn’t call me at 2:30, or 2:45, or 2:15, or 3:55, or 4:55, and I was worried. I was also really busy that day because Missy was meeting with a public defender and I tagged along—with Ava in tow because of course—officially for the purpose of covering it for her story, but also because Missy needed emotional support since Christian had racked up yet another charge. This time, he’d tagged the Dallas County courthouse and was in deep fucking shit.
“If the damage exceeds $100,” Bonnie, the public defender was explaining while I tilted my phone screen toward my face three times, only to see that, nope, you still hadn’t called, “the defendant is subject to a fine of up to $250,000, ten years imprisonment, or both. When property damage does not exceed $100, the offense is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $100,000, one year imprisonment, or both.”
“Well, how much damage is this considered?” Missy asked. “It’s just spray paint. Someone could just paint over it, right? Or maybe scrub it off?” She was twisting a handkerchief so hard I wondered if her palms were going to start bleeding.
“They’ll have someone assess the cost to clean it up or repaint and all of that would be included in the cost,” Bonnie said somberly. “It’s going to be more than $100, Missy.”
“Oh Lord Jesus,” Missy moaned, twisting the handkerchief tighter.
“Remember, that’s maximum sentence,” I said, moving my hand from my phone to her forearm. “He won’t get that.” I glanced at Bonnie. “Will he?”
Bonnie lifted her palms and winced. “He’s got quite a record and he did this while the charges for the last one were still pending. It looks really bad. The prosecutor will see him as unrepentant and the judge will probably agree. It’s unlikely that he’ll get the maximum sentence, but they won’t go easy on him. He’s been given a slap on the wrist several times already. I doubt he’ll be able to avoid some jail time for this one.”
Missy exhaled a strangled sigh and clutched her forehead. “And that’ll be on his record forever.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“No offense, Bonnie,” Ava piped up after throwing an arm around Missy and clutching her shoulders, “but maybe going with the public defense isn’t the best solution.” Bonnie pursed her lips and Ava turned to Missy. “If I hired a really good attorney, would you want to try that?”
“Oh,” Missy said. “I don’t know. Would that—“
“It wouldn’t really make a difference,” Bonnie said. “Just hiring an expensive attorney isn’t like pressing an easy button or summoning a genie in a bottle. This case is pretty cut and dried and there’s no point in fighting it. Missy, the best outcome is trying to get the most lenient deal out of them and that means cooperating, not fighting.”
“I’m just trying to help,” Ava said defensively.
“You’re helping,” Missy said, patting Ava’s hand and then reaching for mine, which I retracted from flipping my phone again, causing Ava to roll her eyes at me. “You’re helping by being here. You’re both wonderful. I don’t have anyone but my son. And that little shit is going to send me to an early grave from all this stress. Damn.”
“Okay, I’m going to see if they’ll let him come in here,” Bonnie said, stepping toward the door of the small room. “I’ll be back shortly.”
“Thank you, Ms. Perez,” Missy said.
“You could just talk to another attorney, Missy,” Ava said after Bonnie left the room. “Pretty much all of them have a free consultation policy. Just to see what they can do for your situation.”
“Hey!” Ava snapped. “At least I’m trying to help and think of another solution instead of just staring at my phone this whole time.”
“Okay, first of all, you wouldn’t even be here helping if I wasn’t here helping, remember?” I snapped back. “And second, I am allowed to look at my phone. I’m juggling a lot of stuff right now and I’m allowed to look at my phone. Missy, is it bothering you that I’m checking my phone?”
“Of course not, Seth,” Missy said. “I know you both have lives outside of my mess. I’m just thankful you’re both here. You certainly don’t have to be.”
“No,” I said. “I do have to be here because I gave you my word to tell your story and this is part of that. Beyond that, I choose to be here. I want to be here. I’m happy to be here because I care about you and Christian.”
“You’re barely here, Seth!” Ava hissed. “You’re sitting in this room, but all you’re doing is trying to telepathically force Charlie to call you.”
“Ava, which one of us does this for a living?”
She scoffed. “Please. You’re obsessing over your phone like a lovesick puppy. My fifteen-year-old little cousin could do that.”
“That is not what I’m doing. Charlie is my responsibility because she doesn’t have anyone to look after her and she’s still kind of unstable.”
“No, Charlie is your responsibility because you made her your responsibility because you’re in love with her and she doesn’t want—“
“Oh my God, Ava. This is not a goddamned soap opera, so will you please stop acting like it is?”
“Oooh, Seth,” Missy cut in with a mischievously lifted eyebrow, suddenly looking amused. “Who’s Charlie? You’re seeing someone? What’s wrong with her? Why’s she unstable? Tell me everything. I need a little distraction from the pile of shit my child has landed himself in.”