Darkest Love

by Melody Tweedy

  “I’m sick of cleaning up his messes!”

  It was a terrible moment to reveal that Rain choked her to unconsciousness. That was when Lily had gone silent. With a quivering lip, Annie had swept out of the room, and when Lily found her staring at the Offline icon next to Rain’s name on Skype, it was the last straw.

  SMACK. Her friend had dealt her that belly-flop slap.

  Now the women stood face–to–face. Annie felt her heart pounding faster and a new feeling rising inside her: fear. I am going crazy.

  Lily was just trying to help. “Lily, why am I such a dirty slut?”

  With that Annie collapsed in a heap, hugging her legs and burying her face in her quivering, tear-drenched knees. I am too filthy to live. A deluge streamed from her eyes, and one word chorused in her head: Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. She rocked in time to the thought, banging her forehead against her knee bones.

  After a moment Lily sat next to her and spoke. “Annie, don’t see him again.”

  Annie raised her head and peered. Her friend’s mouth quivered and her eyes were full of stunned concern Annie had never seen on anyone but her grandmother. With a gasp of recognition she collapsed into her friend’s chest, sobbing like the child she had been the last time she saw kind eyes like those.

  * * * *

  “I probably will sleep with him again.”

  Lily’s face dropped. A heavy feeling, one that acknowledged the truth of Annie’s statement, filled the space between the women. “You are a masochist.”

  Annie nodded. “I think I am.”

  The computer beeped as the chat box quivered from an incoming signal: Rain Mistern is online. Lily placed her hand on her friend’s arm. “No horseplay in the tropics, please.”

  “I am crazily obsessed with him.”

  “…Please?”

  Annie glanced at Lily’s face, and down at the trashy arm tattoo she wished she had never gotten, and over to Rain’s name on the screen. Lily knew her story: the way Annie had slept around with men at university after reading one too many radical feminist texts. “There is nothing feminist about opening your legs and letting a bunch of horseshit guys give it to you. Especially if they talk about you in the campus pub and ruin your academic career,” the more sensible woman had said.

  “Feminism is about sexual freedom.” Annie had said. She scoffed when she remembered it. How naïve she had been!

  Lily pulled her back into a hug, placing a hand over Annie’s eyes to cover Rain’s incoming message and averting Annie’s body with a twist of her upper arm.

  “Your grandmother is protecting you,” Lily smiled, bringing a finger to the sapphire pendant Rain had recovered. She knew that would hit the spot.

  Annie nodded. Her grandmother had been the only one who cared about her. Annie’s mom, herself a disillusioned feminist, had let her daughter sleep around since age fourteen and warned her about absolutely nothing, even sneaking rough boys in and out of the house. She would describe the boys to Annie’s father later when she got angry and wanted to hurt her daughter. Annie had received more than one belting for that.

  Annie’s eyes teared up again as she remembered. Her mom’s other bad habit was revealing her confidences to friends. Every one of her aunts and uncles and her communion sponsors and all her mother’s tennis partners knew about the guys who dumped Annie and the guys who rejected her and the guys who pumped and dumped her.

  “Sex is bad for me,” Annie whispered, comically blunt. Lily laughed.

  “Reckless sex is bad for you.”

  “I know what I need to do. I need to get out of here.” Annie hopped to her feet and swept to the bedroom, not even glancing at Skype. Lily heard the click of a phone dislodged from its charger and the opening and shutting of a cupboard.

  “Where are you going?”

  Annie’s teary head popped out from around the door. Her smile revealed the extent of the redness that had gathered in her eyes as she cried. “I’m going to Sivu. By the time Rain gets there I’ll be yards ahead of him. He’s not going to torture me in New York.”

  She whipped her head back out of view and unzipped her suitcase with an assured zap. In the living room Lily shook her head, not sure what to think.

  * * * *

  “Annie?”

  Annie tried to ignore Lily’s voice. She knew the other woman was trying to pull her back into a heartfelt discussion, but Annie wasn’t even sure if she could trust her dearest friend.

  Terrible memories were flooding back. Her father had been a humiliation specialist–his favorite move during a rage was to kick you in the rear. Annie stiffened right to her bones when she remembered his hands on her shoulders and his booted foot kicking her in the part of her body she hated most.

  She started to cry even now, thinking about it. That behavior had only started after her ass came in, around age fourteen. It was as if her father wanted to express his scorn for her developing body. To shame it, just as the bullies at school did.

  I have no support, she thought, stuffing sock balls and folded lingerie into her suitcase and tuning out Lily’s entreaties and questions. I am the perfect punching bag for men. The perfect slut. The perfect submissive for sadistic Rain Mistern.

  What was that line people said? A woman always looks for her father. Sometimes Annie wondered if her adult relationships were fraught because she had been a lapdog since birth: a dumpster for other people’s rage and bad feelings.

  She stared at her folded shirts slotted like colored Legos in the suitcase.

  Was Lily even her friend? Annie had an awful thought:

  She’s hungry for information because she wants to gossip. She’ll gossip with Mandy and Marty and probably with Rain himself.

  “Lily, I’d like you to leave. I’m not changing my mind.” After a pause, Lily sighed and turned. Annie heard her footsteps then the click of the door as she exited.

  Annie punched the air. The legs of the silky stockings she was holding flailed about like an angry octopus.

  Chapter 6

  Rain sat on the couch, feeling like he was going to pop after Mandy’s breakfast, and opened his Firefox browser. With a few keyboard–strokes and a scroll down his bookmarks he found it: Field Notes, his favorite anthropology blog, by a colleague from Yale named Clint Pearson.

  He grinned as the page loaded, barely aware of Mandy body shuffling in from the kitchen and curling up next to him on the couch.

  “Check me out,” he said, slapping the female thigh that was barely covered by his boxer shorts. The photographer had gotten a great shot of Rain’s face beaming over that Vassar woman’s shoulder, while another beam of light shone from the stage behind him, casting a halo around his happy-looking head. Photographers were shuffling all around, the zaps of their cameras producing some nice light effects in the foreground too.

  But the funniest thing was Rain’s expression. He peered down to where his trophy was almost spearing the woman’s behind as he hugged her. Rain guffawed loudly. Why had they chosen something so gratuitous? So phallic?

  “Look at the headline,” Mandy said, gesturing. That left no doubt about the angle they were taking: Bad Boy of Anthropology Makes Another Conquest.

  Rain skimmed the article, lips pursing in amusement as he emerged for the first time from the sensual stupor Mandy had pulled him into. The world of anthropology flooded back. The blog author–Clint Pearson–had barely managed to last one paragraph without making a crack about Rain’s sex life. There were way too many references to Rain’s penetrating insights, his scandalous disregard for etic factions, and female researchers who salivated over his tenure-grabbing prowess. Pearson even wrote that Rain was sinking his eager teeth into a new project on Sivu.

  Annie Childs? The man made nothing explicit, but one too many double entendres had set a very sensual tone.

  “I wish they hadn’t used that picture of Lynne Morgan. I’m jealous,” Mandy said, reading over Rain’s shoulder.

  “I wish Clint Pearson would moderate h
is tone,” Rain said. “This article contains so many wisecracks it is about to collapse. It requires the support of a buttress.”

  “I think it has a buttress!” Mandy retorted, gesturing again at the picture of Lynne Morgan from Vassar and her very nice bum. Rain had to admit that was funny. He roared with laughter, patting Mandy’s hip, and seized his phone from the coffee table.

  He would not have suspected such quick wit from the impassive Mandy. Perhaps the critics are right. I see women as vessels. I treat them like objects, neglecting to notice their inner qualities.

  Still cackling, Rain found Pearson’s number in his contacts. Mandy watched at his side, boxer shorts rustling and lips nuzzling his bicep.

  “Clint!” Rain barked o-ver the phone. “You have gone too far. Headline and picture both.”

  “The job of a blogger,” Clint said sleepily on the other line, “is to capture the tone of the event.” His voice was cheeky, though he sounded like he had just woken up.

  “You captured bollocks, buddy,” Rain countered, stroking the female head that had collapsed in his lap. “This will hurt me and you know it.”

  “Wow. Getting touchier.”

  Rain knew what Clint meant. Early in his career he had ignored the sexism bleating, rushing through interview questions about his personal life and sticking to the science. The beauty of that was that it made the interviewer look unprofessional, and Rain came out looking good. “You are like a tabloid,” he had hissed after a Huffington Post interviewer grilled him about his dating habits and only asked a smattering of questions about his research. All the questions she did ask focused on battle–of–the–sexes style nonsense. “Are you introducing a Page 3 girl at some point?” he had scoffed. The Huff Post never alluded to his sex life again.

  “Well, maybe, Clint,” Rain told Pearson, trying to keep any amusement out of his voice. “Apparently a shitstorm started while I was in Sivu.”

  “Ah. Did it involve the Advancement of Women in Science Board?”

  “It certainly did. They had a conference, released some kind of damning paper with my name all over it. They neglected to mention that I am the only male researcher who has never published a collaborative paper without a 50/50 female/male split. They also didn’t mention that I’ve nurtured ten female PhD students to associate lecturer level. In the last ten years. That is an unprecedented number.”

  “You sure get those clits quivering too. Nurture them a bit with your thumb?”

  Rain scoffed. “Between you and me…yes. But what’s really starting to worry me is they’re looking for evidence of this attitude in my research. Evidence of my bias. It’s total bullshit. That criticism of the paper I published about New Guinean marriage rituals; did you read that one?”

  “Refresh my memory.”

  “I argued that past researchers have overstated the extent to which a New Guinean bride must send submissive signals to male members of her new family. It was a pretty measured conclusion. Small and specific and backed up by a lot of observation.”

  “All right.”

  “They’re calling that sexist. They’re saying ‘insensitive pig Rain Mistern strikes again.’ It’s bollocks.” Rain was getting angry. “If this goes any further it will start to seriously undermine the fucking peer-review process. Anthropology will collapse into a science-less bundle of PC platitudes.”

  Clint sighed. “It will become like the Humanities, you think?”

  “You know I love the Humanities.” Rain was the only researcher in his department who put lyrical descriptions in his writing, and who wrote passages from the point of view of the tribesmen he studied. People criticized him for that, too, but he didn’t care. “Listen Clint, just fuck this blog off, OK? Take the blog down. I would really appreciate it.”

  “Okay, Mistern.”

  “It’s not you. It’s the storm that’s gathering.”

  “Hasn’t reached the mainstream press yet, buddy. The Mail and Times Online both have stories up this morning and they’ve cut Lynne Morgan’s ass out of their shots and kept your face there looking most dashing. It’s a very respectful, measured piece, in both cases.”

  “Follow their lead then, bad boy.”

  “You are the bad boy, Mistern. I already proclaimed it. And Google will have my blog on cache.”

  Unfortunately Mandy chose that moment to moan in Rain’s lap, where she was licking at the sleepy erection that was rising in his pants. Clint must have overheard because he roared a laugh, nearly choking on whatever mug of tea or coffee he was sipping on the other line. Rain smiled.

  “You never rest, Mistern,” Clint said. “Have a great weekend, ok?”

  “You too.” Rain pressed the red button and peered down at Mandy’s sleepy face in his lap, finally able to concentrate on the wonderful things it was doing.

  * * * *

  As the blow job heated up, Rain found himself in a surprisingly reflective mood. Guilty thoughts swirled in Rain’s head while Rain’s dick swirled–a meter or so below–in Mandy’s head.

  Was it true? Was he a bad guy?

  “Mmm.” Mandy worked her tongue so well his eyes closed automatically. A warm ripple of lust moved up his chest and through the arms he had built up over years, turning them into weapons. The lifts and pushups heated his whole body, literally ripping him to bits from the inside. He collapsed in an exhausted heap every evening after his workout and fell into a deep, blissful sleep.

  It was the way he liked to live—fast and hard.

  “Ohh, Mandy.” His legs still creaked with morning stiffness and he really needed to stretch them but right now his attention was only on his glorying cock; it monopolized proceedings. As Mandy licked he thought back to his college days, the days when he first learned how easily women would give it up for him, and how cold he felt towards them after they did. It wasn’t that he disliked them, it was just that … well, they made it too easy.

  And then they chased him. Grabbing at him with spray-tanned hands and pulling their dress hems nervously and wearing musky perfume he really didn’t like and calling way too often. It was just not hot, and when he ran his eyes over them in all that overly shiny stuff—a style that almost all women adopted in the 21st century, even women scientists–he couldn’t help thinking they were compromised. All these forces—big companies, trashy television, shopping centers, careless fathers, Made in China trinkets—had seeped into their lives, to their detriment, taking away what was soft and feminine and timeless. They were victims of the 21st century. The more he studied South Pacific tribes, the more he felt this way.

  And if they were willing to compromise themselves for him? Well, he wasn’t going to say no. He just didn’t care. Sometimes he actually wrinkled his nose and squinted during sex to soften that impression of lacquer and stickiness and the smell of spray tan and cheap fragrance.

  “Oh, Rain,” Mandy mumbled on his penis. Rain rested a hand on her head and started to thrust, feeling her soft, tensing, hard–working lips sliding up and down his cock. Good girl; the thought entered his head around his own gasps.

  He stared down at her figure. Mandy’s back, butt and legs were emerging in that order from the back of her head. The length of her body was stretched down his couch. All three sections of her body were smooth and shapely; they looked like flesh-toned spaceships queuing up for a suicidal plunge into a hairy sun.

  Head down and ass up, it would have been nice to take her doggy–style from the other end of the couch, but this was nice too. As he felt his orgasm approaching, Rain tightened his hands around her hair. It was great to grab that head and rock her even harder, eliminating the need to thrust and satisfying the need his biceps had to always tense. He took his satisfaction as greedily as if he was stealing from a purse or grabbing a neck or striking somebody in the face.

  Rain exploded. He realized with small regret that he had not warned her–it had been too good to feel the end of his shaft brushing her throat. He had lost himself, letting his own feelings and tho
ughts glide in counterpoint to her licks.

  The licks had taken different tones. Music. Rain collapsed back, gasping, staring at the cluster of light that was exploding behind his own eyelids. He opened his eyes again to the sight of Mandy retching. Her pretty eyes were filling with tears and her slender fingers were locking around her own throat.

  “Sorry, babe. You’re too good.” She managed a flustered wink and went back to retching, fingers snaking up at her corded chin as if she could claw the cum back out.

  * * * *

  “He has to be stopped. Rain Mistern is turning anthropology into a frat house sex party!”

  Oh, boy. By this point in the press conference Rain was watching his language so carefully he actually self-censored that thought as it popped into his head. Is that sexist?

  Would oh girl be more appropriate? He would have to check the manual. Or is womanual the more PC term?

  Anger rose inside him as he noticed his own cringing posture. His finger was tapping anxiously on the podium and he had caught his own breath issuing tensely from his throat more than once, producing a weird ocean-waves sound in the microphone. That sort of thing never happened to him. Rain’s eyes narrowed in exasperation. He didn’t like the way these women made him second-guess himself.

  “Does anyone have any real questions? You know, about the science? Any criticisms that are grounded in fact? There are a few oversights in my study—I reread it myself last night and I can see that—but none of you have been smart enough to spot them. You know, to start a real debate.” It was deliberately provocative. His voice boomed off the walls of the Milstein Hall at the American Museum of Natural History and into the ears of the angry audience.

  Oh, you make it too easy. Right on cue, the audience started to snark and whisper to each other furiously. Someone in the back row yelled something about how she had studied “under Karl Popper, thank you very much.”

  Rain suppressed the smile that was trying to spread across his face. “Did any of you actually read the study?” he asked, putting a righteous, sniffy tone in his voice. That’ll get ‘em. The Society for the Advancement of Women in Science had noble enough intentions, but their practice had degenerated into a sort of witch hunt. A warlock hunt–against men.