by Hawke, Jessa
We parted because we had to, because I could not even stand to look at him and he could not be with anyone who knew the truth behind his slick moves. You know the rest. It was only later that I caught him talking to a well-known criminal freshly released from prison, and by that time, I had realized that the tenderness in my breasts and stomach were not the symptoms of any kind of indigestion. When I told him, proud, beautiful Arkadii fell to his knees, begging me not to tell his wife or anyone else about it, that he would lose everything, that she may actually kill him this time.
I would not have told a soul, except for my Mama. And the rest of it?
Well, I suppose that is my sad story to live, my sad lesson to learn.
Such lessons come to us all.
THE END
Proposal Temptations
The long line of sleek water bottles at the supermarket creates a glare. She runs her finger down the horizontal line of them, feeling the smooth plastic underneath her fingertips. Mary Anne wonders what it would be like if she slipped a condom onto one of these babies and inserted it straight into her pussy.
She wonders this often, usually with food. A cucumber or a firmly frozen banana. Though maybe that would be too cold. Although the peel would mimic the silkiness of cock skin, which is the whole point, anyway. She heard a story, once, about a man who would buy honeydew melons at the grocer’s, come home, heat them up a little, and put his dick into that. Maybe it’s about the center part, the one that is rough with seeds and soft with strands of fruit tissue. Why are people into that sort of thing? Mary Anne muses this as she pushes her little silver cart down the aisles, pretending to read the labels on cat food. What a joke. Mittens will eat anything that’s put in front of her, even if it’s laced with arsenic. She doesn’t need antioxidants and electrolytes. She’s a cat, God damn it.
Mary Anne has bones like those of a bird. They are slim and hollow, making her a real feather-weight. If you were to look at her from the back, you would be able to claim that you could see the slight elusiveness of the thigh gap, encased in the crumple of chinos. The breathable fabric of her cardigan clings to her naked skin, because Mary Anne does not wear anything underneath it when she goes grocery shopping. She likes that the minute she steps into the store, the air conditioning perks her nipples right up, tightening them into peaks that the eyes of the bag boys follow. She’s buttoned it almost to the top, but the pale chinos and the light pink sweater are almost blending with her skin tone, giving her the appearance of being simultaneously naked and clothed. This is something Mary Anne knows.
She pushes her cart in front of the berries and considers their tender flesh. They say that berries are ripe with juice, and all the rest of those little sayings. Pop a cherry. Squeeze those melons. Strawberry-colored nipples. These are the words that Mary Anne whispers to herself in a low voice as she brings the perforated plastic basket of blueberries to her nose and smells them. The best part, to her, is the exposed starburst of their stems. It brings, almost unbidden, the image of herself splayed on the sheets at home, on all fours like an animal, the pucker of her anus bared to the world, vulnerable and begging to be taken.
Mary Anne is dating Roger, but she doesn’t think about him now.
Two years ago, shopping with Roger was the most exciting thing she could think of. Mary Anne has plenty of thoughts and opinions, but she doesn’t necessarily like to voice them out loud; she does, however, appreciate people who do. Roger was one of those people. Average build, dark blond hair, and blue eyes that snapped as he talked. Roger is an EMT, and he thrives best in high-powered, high-stress situations; he does not shy away from work, dirt, or mess. He was the first person Mary Anne knew who took her to dinner and didn’t shy away from telling her about the time he found an old man dead in his bath after falling asleep with the water heater on. He had a heart attack and the organ in question was boiled through by the time Roger’s team had arrived.
Mary Anne lost her appetite, but wondered what Roger’s mouth tasted like.
There’s something about the good man in the storm. For their second date, Roger took her to a museum opening of Beautiful People, where he commented ironically on the value of their beauty to the models themselves. It was amazing to her that Roger, who didn’t inspire many fantasies with his looks alone, could open his mouth and instantly transform himself into an incredibly desirable individual. What this fast-paced, quick-talking, witty guy say in her, she didn’t know. She thought maybe it was that she served as sort of a neutral background for him, letting him shine.
Still waters run deep, after all.
They had that verbal banter that serves as its own version of foreplay. Everything was a buildup. Jokes about the museum, talking about their parents, the way she licked ice cream off of her finger. She felt dirty and charged all at the same time, and when he talked about EKGs and the patients he had lost at work that day, she wanted to climb across the table directly into his lap and feel his cock pressing into the crack of her ass.
So she stopped wanting and started acting.
Later, after Roger had heaved off of her and they lay side by side, chests heaving and lower bodies thrumming with sexual exertion, Mary Anne got the strange feeling that sex did not affect Roger in the same way it did her. He could go with it or without it, losing himself only in the moment itself, but for her, an entire day could be filled with a series of tiny erotic charges that would get her juices flowing. When he leaned over and kissed her, leaving the taste of her pussy on her lips and the smell of it in her nostrils, she figured she didn’t care that much. How much of a problem could it be, right?
Now she’s in the supermarket smelling fruit.
It started slowly, she supposes, trying to ignore the crushing weight of the feeling those memories evoke in her chest. She remembers buying all the lingerie, feeling unbelievably glamorous and adult because now she finally had a reason to step into Frederick’s of Hollywood without feeling like an imposter. All the silks and the lace, all the colors, all the sheer teddies you could see her round little breasts through. Getting waxed had a purpose now; she saw a comedy sketch once about a lady who got shamed into realizing she didn’t need to wax because she wasn’t having sex and it stained her memory for a long time. Now she arrived at her appointments with the bag of lingerie, knowing that no technician in the world would ever ask her to lift out the little aqua-blue lace G-string as proof of her upcoming sexual escapades, but it made her feel better knowing it was there.
She liked the little things. The way Roger’s lap was always warm and solid underneath her thighs. The way he would laugh whenever she nuzzled his ear, but would get immediately distracted from whatever he was doing if she put the tip of her tongue around the delicate whorl of the outside of it. She sucked his earlobes and neck because she liked the texture, the idea that her mouth allowed her to have power over him and make this absolutely controlled person just lose his shit. She lived for the groans that would come from somewhere deep inside of his throat and the way he would eventually stop clicking as those groans would deepen and intensify, until finally, he would growl, pick her up, light as air, and throw her on the bed, followed by an exploratory journey of her body with his mouth.
It was slow going, the progression of it all, so gradual that she almost didn’t see it coming. It took longer and longer for the clicking of his mouse to stop, until eventually, the sight of the blue screen glowing around Roger’s head turned into a sign of discouragement for her. He put on some weight, got a little lazier, and stopped wanting to move so much. His job was so stressful that most days, when Roger had time off, he wanted to spend it by pretending to be a vegetable. Somewhere down the line, he had actually achieved his goal.
Now, it didn’t matter what Mary Anne was wearing. Undercorsets, crotchless panties, or flannel pajamas; Roger had simply stopped responding to anything that was not a direct request. Sex had become about efficiency, as had their communal life. Roger had settled into a routine that worked for him
, one that he had no desire to mix up in any way. And Mary Anne did not like to use her words.
She tried all the hints. She would sneak up behind him while he was watching an anime, slide her hands up his shoulders and down over his chest and blow in his ear; in response, Roger would smile, give her a quick peck on the cheek and pat her hand, not bothering to take his eyes off the screen. She would lean against his shoulder to get his attention, then lean over for a kiss on the mouth, allowing him to get a good look down her shirt. To Roger, this translated as cuddle time. Mary Anne longed for the days where Roger would handcuff her to the bed—by her request only—and then pierce her in all sorts of intimate and depersonalized ways that would make her curl her toes into the bedspread and express herself in ways she had only seen in certain porns. It’s not so much that Mary Anne wanted to be in porn; it was more that imagining herself as one of those expressive, carefree women who enjoyed the slap of ball sacks on their clits made her feel as if she was queen of Cock Mountain or something. And orgasms are just much better when you’re the queen.
Mary Anne loads her tiny little cart low on groceries; she only needs a few things for the fruit compote she is making. She loves watching the fruit cook together, like one big orgy, fruit unpeeling from its skin and mingling juices. She searches for an open lane and spies one that is closing down. She hurries before the guy can close it and arranges all her purchases like she’s playing life-sized Tetris. She’s so lost in the neat arrangement of her food on the conveyer belt that she misses the cashier asking her to pay. Startled and a little embarrassed, she fishes bills out of her wallet and hands them over to him.
“You’re two dollars short,” he tells her.
When did she become such a scatterbrain? Flushing, she reaches back into the calfskin for the remaining money, and when she hands it to the guy, she notices him, truly, for the first time. Brown hair, long and a little greasy, ears pierced with some young man’s thing, curling loops of plastic in each ear. A navy blue smock offsetting nut-brown eyes, and the sprinkle of a goatee on his face. He looks fresh, boyish, and young. He looks like if he took off his smock and polo, he’d have the long, lean lines of a man not fully grown into his adult body just yet, but also, like he would be incredibly eager to try just about anything that was suggested.
Her fingers linger on the bills as he pulls them free.
At home, after she adds sugar to the fruit, she sits back and watches it cook, bunching her apron in her lap. She wonders if he noticed how she stared at him. She wonders if he cared or if he liked it. She wonders what kind of women he likes to beat off to. Or maybe even, what kind of men. The hours tick by with the dull beigeness of everday, and she barely notices that she and Roger have not talked at all that day. She notices the way the bed dips when he finally joins her in it, at about one in the morning, and she closes her eyes, trying to block out the scent of musk rising off of his body. She closes her eyes and sails away into the corner of her mind that has a door. When she opens the door, it is a red room lined in velvet, with a huge chest of drawers in it. It is antique, and each one of the drawers looks no bigger than a slim jewelry box. When she opens it, it slides out deep, and in each little drawer is a flogger, a whip, a feather, some rope. She turns around and in her mind’s eye, Mary Anne is wearing shiny black latex; it is stretched over her breasts in little darts, and it showcases the slim cut of her hip that demonstrates it to its best advantage. She looks like the sexy librarian someone let loose from her paper cage.
There is a man in the room with a fetish mask on his face, blocking out any intimate detail. Only his eyes are showing, and she likes it like that. She read somewhere that pupils expand to twice their normal size when a person is aroused. She removes a flogger from its drawer and faces the man, who is strung up on a metal post, his hands tied behind him.
“Look at me,” says Mary Anne.
She turns the flogger upside down so that the only part touching her is the hard rod that joins all the little strips of leather together. She is running it up and down her torso, lingering between her breasts, sliding it up her neck all the way to her lips. She locks eyes with the man’s brown ones, and very slowly and deliberately, licks the handle of the instrument.
He whimpers.
Mary Anne discovers, to her delight, that there is a zipper on the lower part of the latex suit, right over her crotch. She unzips it slowly, one tooth at a time, until the clean-shaven sight of her is available for viewing. She takes the flogger and runs it over where her body starts to split, enjoying the feeling of the hard handle stimulating the thousands of nerve endings located there. The man’s breath is starting to come in shorter bursts and he is straining against his restraints.
“Watch. Are you watching?” she asks, her voice barely a whisper.
She spreads her legs and bends over at the waist. She teases the opening to her pussy with the handle, probing a little, and then, inch by inch, eases the flogger inside of herself until she has swallowed it whole. Up and down it goes, rubbing her with its wrongness, stretching her, almost uncomfortably hard inside of her, but she can feel the blood coursing into the tissue around it as her pussy expands to accommodate the delicious intruder. She can feel herself tightening, the spasms building inside of her faster than she can control them, and before she knows it, she is creaming right over the handle of the flogger, gasping for breath.
She slides it out. The man has stopped moving; it seems the entire energy of his body is centered below his waist, where the massive erection he has makes more of a statement than his words ever could. Mary Anne makes eye contact. He wants something. She walks over to him, leans in close, almost licking the mask on his face.
“What is it you want, honey?” she asks him, looking into his eyes. He makes some sounds, but the questions in his eyes burns. “How about a kiss, hm?”
She reaches behind him and unzips the mask. She takes the handle of the flogger, rubs it onto his lips, and then parts his mouth open to take in the length of it.
“Suck on it. Can you taste that? That’s me on there,” she tells him as he starts sucking obediently.
She kneels down and takes his cock into her mouth. He is firm and springy, and she wastes no time being particularly gentle. His cock hits her in the back of her throat, salty and sweet, and she runs her tongue over the underside of him. She can hear him above her, trying not to gag on the handle of the flogger as helpless moans start escaping him. She grazes him lightly with her teeth and he starts to whimper, almost dropping the flogger.
“Drop it and you’re dead, you hear?” she says, and he clamps his teeth around it firmly.
She works his cock and probes the softness of his balls with her hands, lifting up his dick to get her mouth on the space called the peritoneum, a word that is inherently unsexy, but a place that causes the man to cry out sharply. One good jam deep into her throat, a movement that feels like burning, and the man spurts deep inside of her mouth, coating her from the inside out with his cum.
It is only when Mary Anne comes to, sticky and wet, that she realizes it has been the guy from the grocery store all along.
When morning comes, Mary Anne makes chocolate pancakes for Roger. It drips a little off the spoon, and she sticks a finger in her mouth to suck off some of the sweetness. Roger reads the paper, rustling sheets with a quiet intensity that she recognizes; he is utterly absorbed by the news. Maybe some new medical thing. Her focused, focused boyfriend. The only thing he is not focusing on is her.
She plates the pancakes. Chocolate, they say, is an aphrodisiac. Roger stabs them with a fork and shovels them into his mouth without even tasting them. She sits on a chair across from him, sipping her herbal tea. Mary Anne feels her heart pound. She is quiet, but she is far from foolish. She has been sensing the growing distance between them for some time now; it is no surprise that she has had a dream about the checkout boy. This morning, when she ran out to get some milk for the pancake batter, she went to that same grocery store because
she was hoping to see him. See if he looked as good as he did in her dream. He was not there. Mary Anne would never overextend herself to find out about his schedule, unless she had a good reason. She intends to talk to Roger about creating some such reason.
But she cannot bring herself to say the words.
How long has it been for her and Roger? Nights of comfortable pounding, where she can make the grocery list in her head while Roger is inside of her. He rolls off and goes to sleep now, says that sex with her is a great way to distress. Mary Anne drips some tea onto her blouse and in wiping it off, her nipples harden. She looks down at her chest sadly. How pathetic. There is no celebration of her sensuality, the lush woman that she is inside.
“Roger, I’m not happy.”
Who said those words? Surely not quiet little Mary Anne. But it seems that they have, after all, jumped out of her mouth onto the table between them, right next to the maple syrup.
Roger peeks out from behind the paper. “So quit your job.”
A bubble of anger rises in Mary Anne’s gut. “Roger, we need to have more sex.”
“What? We just had sex on Monday.”
“The fact that you can pinpoint the day with such deadly accuracy shows that it’s gotten a little too predictable.”
“How come you didn’t tell me before?”
Mary Anne thinks back. Those times she came up to him and leaned on him, give him those bedroom eyes. The night she cuddled him and cradled his balls in her hand and he just kissed her and did nothing. “I tried,” she says simply.
He puts the paper down. “I didn’t know, damn.” He pauses, thinking it over as he would a triage situation at work. “All right, you, me, in the bedroom now. More sex for us.”
He’s getting up, but Mary Anne stops him. She cannot believe what she is saying, but as soon as the words hit the air, she knows they are true. “There’s more.”
Roger groans; in his mind, he’s found the solution to the problem and doesn’t want to bother with more. “What?”
