by Hawke, Jessa
“Let’s,” I agree, then crane my neck for Henry. He winds his way back through the crowd of kids, clutching a huge mug of beer. “Henry, hurry up and drink that, we’re going to go to karaoke.” Henry looks excited; he loves karaoke, he’s been inviting me for weeks, and I’ve never said yes until now. Maybe it’s because, sweet as he is, he lacks a certain small-time rockstar charm.
I spy Justin coming out of the back room, carrying his guitar case. Nando waves him over. “Hey, we’re going to karaoke.”
“Cool, yeah, I’ll go.” I laugh silently to myself at his cockiness. I like it.
Henry gulps down his beer and we exit into the chilled night air.
The first place we hit is the Zebra Lounge across the street; it’s filled with kids who are carbon copies of the baby monsters teeming around Otto’s. There’s nowhere to put our coats or butts down, so we leave. Then the drummer—his name is Jake, he tells me—suggests a place over on St. Mark’s, though he can’t remember the name.
We walk into the hippest place in the city to be on a Friday night; it’s all bright lights and penis bongs, pimply college kids spilling out of bubble tea places, their faces sucking on each other like they’re dementors freshly freed from Azkaban. The group of us walk up the stairs to what I now recognize to be St. Mark’s Sing-Sing karaoke bar into a field of white girls who decided that tonight was 80s night. They don’t sound half bad, but from the way they’re dominating the bar, we realize we’re never getting a song in edgewise, so we book a room.
Positioned on that narrow plastic booth together in front of a big blue screen, I’m as simultaneously uncomfortable and excited as a girl getting her first vibrator. Justin’s going to hear me, and I can’t exactly croon the way he can. I think he realizes this, because when he looks over at me, his eyes are animated as all hell.
“What?” I hiss, self-conscious in my nun dress and trying not to care.
“I’m gonna get to hear you siiiing,” he says in a sing-song, and though neither of us has to say it, we can both feel it. That charge, that intimacy that’s going to pass between us as surely as death itself will one day come. “It’s been my dream,” he continues. I edge a little closer to him, he edges a little closer to me, and then Nando, who’s on my right, edges a little closer to all of us. I pull out the karaoke song list book, and start chattering away about all the songs I like. I’m going on and on and then I realize that neither of them has said anything in response.
“Hellooo, is anybody home?” I ask, waving a hand in front of their faces.
“Oh, we were just checking to see,” Nando says casually.
“See what?”
“How long you’d keep talking if no one interrupted you,” Justin chimes in. That sassy bitch. I gasp and slap him on the shoulder, and he laughs, but I know I like it, that cockiness, that self-assuredness, the fact that he’s not afraid to rib me. What else would he not be afraid to do, I wonder, my hand lingering on his shoulder, where the curl of his hair lays against my fingers, softer and denser than I could have ever imagined.
We sing. Justin hogs the mic, but his voice is so good that I don’t even care. Henry is old school. Nando knows all the words and we belt out Chicago song after Chicago song together, and while I sing, I feel their eyes on my face, and suddenly, I truly don’t care that I’m not wearing anything but lipstick, and that my nun dress is all wrong. Dear me, dare to be different, dare not to care.
The hours tick into long after midnight, when I remember that I actually have class in the morning. The cold air creeps into our bones as we all congregate on the corner near Ray’s Famous Pizza. Nando and Henry insist on walking me to the train, and their manners warm me despite anything. Justin decides to walk back to his car; he’s got a long drive back upstate, where he goes to grad school, he explains. And then he in his tri-color knit hat walk off into the night.
And that’s February.
* * *
So now that you’ve heard me sing, I write, you’ll have to come up with a new dream. I send the message and hold my breath. It feels ballsy to send it, no matter how innocent it is. I try not to care. I hear a ping and look down.
You sound good. Your voice makes everyone sing in tune.
Huh? I never expected the corny out of Justin. But there it is.
What, was it your first time at karaoke? I tease.
First time with a beautiful woman, he answers, and my heart starts to hammer. Justin Raleigh, whose face I see in my dreams, has just told me I’m beautiful. Does he know? I wonder. Does he know that last night, I pictured us leaving the coffee shop next to Otto’s in the early morning, his neck wrapped in a gray and red striped scarf. Does he know I saw the steam from the coffee in my mind rise up and curl around his face, and does he know that in my dream, I felt something so strong for him that I walked up to him, took his face in my hands, and put my tongue into his mouth, and that it was better than I could have ever imagined? My phone pings again.
Come see Romeo and Juliet at my school this weekend. I’ll drive. Nando will come.
The drive up is wonderful and exciting. Nando is meeting us there, so on the way up, I tell Justin all about Romeo and Juliet, and he patiently lets me nerd out about all the adaptations I’ve seen or heard about.
“There’s a comic book, and a military version, and a Di Caprio version—“
“So that’s your type?” he asks, one hand on the wheel, the other stuck instinctively between my two gloved hands.
“What?”
“Blonde and blue-eyed.”
“I’m more a personality and talent kind of girl,” I say slowly, suddenly shy, and cradle his hand like it’s a precious bird, oblivious to the danger of the road.
He nods and smiles slowly. He draws his hand out of my hands and focuses on the road. “Good,” he says.
I’ve got my hiking boots on and after the play is over, Nando, Justin, and I go into the woods by the school. There is still frost on the ground, leftovers of winter, and the bare tree branches trace crazy circulines into the sky. The three of us are mostly quiet, but I’s companionable silence, the kind that you don’t want to be broken except for the occasional lone cry of a bird communicating with the other end of the woods. There is a gargantuan tree branch making a bridge over a frozen pond, and the boys flank me on either side to escort me across. Our breath puffs into the cold, crisp afternoon air.
Later, in his campus apartment, Justin mixes a batch of cupcakes from a mix. And I don’t care that he’s vegetarian, I really don’t, because our mutual love of chocolate drowns that out into obscurity. Nando sits in the corner, drumming on a blind table, the kind drummers use for practice.
“So when did you lose it?” I ask Justin suddenly, and as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know I regret asking the question. Because I know I’ll be asked, and I know the answer might leave me ostracized from the cozy little sub-community I’ve just managed to enter.
“Fourteen.”
Fourteen? Good God, he was just a child. He catches sight of my expression and explains. “It was my babysitter. I think she was just bored one day and thought it might be fun to play around with a kid. Screwed me up for years,” he says, and goes back to stirring the mixture in the bowl, even though it’s already turned silken.
Nando has also perked up; I can almost feel his ears point like a dog’s in curiosity. “Sucks, man,” he says, but he’s staring out the window as if he’s lost in his own little world. “They say guys are jerks, but damn, doesn’t anyone ever wonder how they become that way?”
Justin finishes pouring the mix into a muffin pan and pops it into the oven. “Preach,” he tells Nando, and plops down on the couch next to me. I can feel his body heat seeping into me as our thighs touch.
“How about you?” Justin asks me, stringing his arm along the back of the couch, along the back of my neck. If I lean back now, my head will be on his arm. I wonder what that feels like, but my stomach has dropped down through my feet and it’s pl
ummeting towards an unseen bottom.
“I, uh, haven’t. Yet. So how about them Rangers?”
I expected shock. I expected outraged gasps. Instead, what I see flicker and settle on the faces of the two musicians is curiosity. Curiosity about me.
“Never?” asks Nando and gets up from the corner to join Justin and I on the couch. I can feel my body curling in on itself; I want to hide. That’s when Justin grabs my hand.
“Don’t close up,” he says, dark brown eyes looking deep into mine. And then he lifts my hand slowly to his lips. When he plants that kiss, I feel my whole body meld into the luxuriousness of the feeling. “You have something special,” he continues. “And I—“ he looks over at Nando, “We would be honored if you would share it with us.”
Oh my.
Justin lengthens my hand into my arm and drapes it over his shoulder; he is solid underneath it, with the softly rounded muscles of someone who is long familiar with vinyasa practices. He pulls my face into his, and then his mouth is on mine, soft and tempting, probing and warm. He tastes good, like cupcake mix. I lick his lips. We draw away a little, lips throbbing. He traces my face with a hand, those musician’s fingers setting my nerve endings ablaze. Behind me, Nando draws his hand down my spine and presses himself into my back. I can feel the boy fullness of his chest pressed against me, his lips on my neck.
I am being kissed by two guys. I have hands stroking my arms, Nando reaching over me, making a cradle with the breadth of his arms, unbuttoning my shirt with his long fingers. Justin slides it off my shoulders, and I’m sitting there in nothing but my bra and jeans before them. Justin tilts me back until I’m almost one morphed beast with Nando, and we’re kissing each other. He’s different, more insistent than Justin, his tongue darting against mine, stabbing me, doing his drummer thing in my mouth. Sounds grosser than it is.
All too soon, I’m naked. And nervous.
“Hey,” I say, hardly recognizing the hoarse voice croaking out of me, “That’s not fair. I’m naked, and you guys aren’t.”
Nando and Justin share this wicked naughty smile that leaves me breathless. They make me comfortable on a few pillows, and then crawl over until they’re crouching on their haunches on the couch, facing one another. And then I see them reach out for each other, take each other’s faces, and press their mouths together.
Oh. Oh.
I can’t say I’m entirely surprised by this turn of events. But I can say that I am turned on by it. They’re tearing off each other’s clothes as only guys do, like the clothes don’t matter, and when they’re both stripped to the waist and done clutching each other with near violence, I’m licking my lips. There’s a throbbing between my legs that I’m starting to address with the heel of my hand, and when they look at me, their mouths wet and small welts rising on their shoulders, they’re hungry.
Nando growls, and I squeal with laughter, faking escaping to the floor. I’m on my back, and Nando’s on top of me, the long press of him in between my legs, his teeth on my breasts through the bra. And then Justin’s behind me, unclasping my clasps, unhooking the waistband of my panties, baring me to the wanting eyes of the room. I turn and now Justin is in Nando’s position, and he’s everything I expected him to be. I run my hand up his stomach, to the sparse hair on his chest, and then Nando comes up behind him and frees his hair. The long curls tumble down his back, and it’s like we’re in a biblical Jewish tribe, and he’s our leader. We’ve taken him down to his roots, and we’re both kissing him, and he’s got his eyes closed, those long lashes driving me crazy.
I kiss them. They kiss me. There is a point where I am on the floor between them, my fingers stroking their nipples in tandem, and then we rise from having our backs to the floor and I’ve got my hands in their pants, working those cocks with my hands while they suck on each other’s necks. Is this me? I wonder as they lay me down and minister to my body.
I’m rising up out of myself; I cannot believe that this is Justin, the object of most women’s eyefucking and fantasies, who’s curly brown head is in between my legs, lapping me, thrashing his tongue in a focused spot, allowing me to uncurl and free myself from inhibition. There is a Nando behind me, tweaking my nipples into focused points, marking my neck with little bites, and when I reach my moment, it is a moment I can see glistening all over Justin’s mouth.
I like it. Is that wrong? I like that now, every time he sings, I will be able to see his mouth as it is now, wet with my juices. I like that I’ve filthied him.
He doesn’t wipe his mouth before he kisses Nando, and now I’m on Nando, too, and they share me through a tumble of tongues. Nando leads Justin to a chair, and when he sits, his cock is pointing up towards the ceiling. He grasps it in his hand and works himself as Nando gathers my still-trembling form from the floor and walks me over. It’s time.
Both guys grasp each one of my hands as I settle down onto Justin, my mouth releasing an unconscious little O as I feel the unfamiliar fullness fill me. Justin closes his eyes, tilting the longer waterfall of his hair back as he feels me slide around him. I lean forward and press my breasts on him, leaving my behind exposed. To my shock, I can feel Nando’s mouth there, licking me, little muscles I didn’t know I had working in response.
I’m wet everywhere. I am the wettest person alive. Soon, the reason for those ministrations becomes clear, and I’m split two ways, from the front and from behind. They go slow, which is good because I am unaccustomed to having one, let alone two men in my body. I can feel them sliding against each other inside me, and they can, too, as is clear from the way they’re looking at each other across my shoulder. And then Justin looks at me, and I know his moment is close and building because his mouth has gone slack.
There is a hot spurt inside me and I hear Justin’s voice as I never heard it before, a strangled animal sound, and I know I’ve unleashed him. Nando stills, pulls out of me, and I get off of Justin. I lay back against him and Nando finishes himself off, directly onto my chest, hands working lightning fast. Sated, we all lay, hand to hand, on the floor, and the first one to break the silence is Justin.
“Good jam session, everybody,” he says, and we all laugh, our strained voices a whisper of memory in the room.
THE END
In Bed With My Best Friends
“Dirty wop!” snarls the blond kid at the heap in front of him. A head pokes out from the bundle of clothes and limbs, a head with a mouth that’s not afraid to be smart, which is fairly ballsy on account of the circumstances.
“Didn’t that insult die out a hundred years ago, you big gorilla?” Sandrino asks, lock after lock of dark hair falling into his eyes.
Not wanting to be reminded that not only is he not of particular intelligence, the blonde with the bad attitude tries to tamp down the inherent knowledge that the new kid in his class, new by way of Italy or Mexico or some country where they make them that dark in general, where they have the metric system, for heaven’s sake, is smarter than him. Already Sandrino is excelling in all of his classes, is the teacher’s favorite, and has become a mild curiosity among the girls of the class. They love his accent, it’s so exotic, and the blonde is tired of their cooing. They didn’t even notice when he broke his arm and had to wear that stupid itchy cast for three weeks. Nobody likes to be the tossed-aside playtoy, so the only logical course of action is to damp the brightness of the new toy.
Following this course of logic, the blond kid calls for backup. He didn’t necessarily have it planned that way, but clearly, the element of surprise with which he approached his initial attack has worn off since Sandrino is now talking back to him.
“Hey guys, the heathen just said that Jesus sucked dick.”
“What?!” Sandrino is aghast. He could have understood anything else, even the jealousy behind the blonde’s kicks and pummeling, but as three more boys come running from all the corners of the playground, he knows that he is in trouble, big-time. He hoped to antagonize the blonde so that he would have the excuse of tu
rning him into a pulp, but four against one? Sandrino knows that those are bad, bad odds, even for him. Especially here, in this Bible-thumping town where saying what the blond kid just said is akin to actually nailing the Savior to the cross.
He runs.
There is no war cry, no battle yell; instead, Sandrino has concentrated all of his energy and focus on running towards the other end of the playground as fast as he can. Behind him, he can hear the sharp slap of sneakers on concrete as the four boys give chase. He knows he must outrun them, or else pay the price, but his legs are not fast enough; he is not the biggest in the group, and he does not yet have the necessary speed. Suddenly, the ground gives out from under him and he goes sailing through the air, the sharp shock of what is happening flooding his body with adrenaline and hopelessness. This is it. He has tripped, fallen, and in another second, they will be upon him; everything will be lost.
He has time only to turn his head before a large figure goes to stand before him, blotting out the sun. He cannot see who it is, but he can hear a girl’s voice say, “Why don’t you just piss off?”
His pursuers have stopped short in front of the girl, whose slightly knotted red locks are the only thing Sandrino himself can see. They hesitate, uncertain of how to proceed now that their prey has a defender.
“He said bad things about Jesus.”
“No he didn’t. And even if he did, what, it’s up to you now to beat him up? If you’re so God-fearing, then let God be the judge.”
The blond kid’s anger is clearly on the rise. He did not expect to be challenged, or to have actual logic thrown in his face; he is of the type not to want to listen to logic because he does not have any way of answering that will make sense. He can sense the gang behind him hesitate, intimidated by the red-haired girl who looks so formidable with her hands on her hips. He takes a step back, and by doing that, he loses. The girl with the upturned nose splashed with freckles leans forward at the waist, looks him right in the eye, and says, in the most condescending way possible, “Run away now, Blondie. Run away.”
