by Meg Howrey
Luke takes hold of Leila’s foot more firmly. He wants to put her toes in his mouth. He wants to put himself inside her. He wants. He wants.
“Were you bored?” Leila asks. “With my friends? I was suddenly totally bored by everybody today. You were the only person who wasn’t, like, boring me stiff.”
“I wasn’t bored.” Luke puts his thumb into Leila’s instep, which is a thing that Luke likes particularly to be done on his own feet. Luke wishes Leila hadn’t used the word “stiff.”
Leila shuts her eyes and rests her head back on the edge of the hot tub.
“Talk some more,” Leila says, “my little infidel.”
For a moment, as Leila adjusts her position, Luke is able to see through the water to the top of Leila’s left breast. Luke is very glad of the suggestion to talk more. Luke thinks maybe he should hold off, for the moment, on more intimate contact with Leila, until he has submitted the idea of more contact with Leila to reasoned thought, or at least until he is more accustomed to what is now, he knows, a full hard-on.
“Where is your mom?” Luke asks. “And your sisters? Where is … where is everybody?”
“Malibu,” Leila says. “They come back tomorrow morning. We’re going to London tomorrow night. Did I tell you? My mom wants me to go with her to the Chimera premiere. I think I might be slightly more useful to her than the twins for the next few months. She can be the mother of a hip teenager with her finger on the pulse of the youth culture. I’m only going because my stepfather is staying here with the twins and he’s always wanting to make sure I know that he loves me too. It’s really tiring. I’m like, listen, you don’t have to love me. I don’t love you. I don’t say that because my mom gets incredibly happy when my stepfather and I say ‘I love you’ to each other. Seriously, she tears up. She’s like, ‘It makes me so happy that you are happy,’ and I’m like, ‘Be serious. It makes you so happy that you are so happy.’ ”
“It could be both, couldn’t it?” Luke is not really feeling stoned anymore, although his mouth feels very dry.
“It could,” Leila says. “Let’s not talk about family.”
“Okay. I’m sort of thirsty.”
“Are you still stoned? There’s a bottle of water right next to your head.”
Luke drinks about half the bottle. He moves cautiously, not wanting Leila to remove her foot from his chest.
“I don’t think I’m stoned.”
“Me either.”
Leila tightens her grip on the edge of the hot tub, extends her other foot, and puts it gently and precisely in Luke’s lap. Luke stops rubbing Leila’s foot.
“Don’t stop,” Leila says, tracing the outline of Luke’s erection with the side of her foot.
“Um … Leila?”
“Well then,” Leila says, seriously. “Sometimes being in a Jacuzzi makes my skin itch.”
Leila removes both her feet from Luke and floats forward, placing her hands on the edge of the hot tub on either side of Luke’s shoulders, and bringing her face close to his. Luke licks his lips, leans forward, and kisses Leila. Luke judges the extent to which Leila is kissing him back to be enough that he can extend an underwater hand and touch Leila’s underwater hip. Leila moves closer, and Luke can now feel her breasts against his chest. Luke tries to angle his hips away from Leila so that his erection is not touching her, even though he wants to pretty much mash it against her. He’s not sure where Leila’s legs are. He’s not sure what can, or could, or should, happen next. For several minutes, Luke is almost content with what is happening in the present, but this ends, and Luke, deciding that he would like to be an agent of whatever happens next, stands up, pulling Leila with him, who grabs his shoulders and moves her mouth away. Luke’s hard-on is at an uncomfortable angle against Leila’s stomach.
“Shut your eyes,” Leila says. “Please.”
Luke shuts his eyes. Leila detaches herself from him. Luke can hear the sound of her stepping out of the hot tub.
“Okay,” says Leila. “You can open them.”
Luke turns around. Leila has wrapped a towel around herself, and is holding one out to Luke.
“Come on,” she says.
Luke pulls himself out of the hot tub and takes the towel. Leila walks to one of the cabanas. Luke follows her, awkwardly, on account of his erection. Without the buoyancy of the water, his penis feels extremely heavy, and not quite a part of the rest of his anatomy. He tries holding his penis with the towel in such a way that it looks like he is just casually holding the towel.
“Can you pull this out?” Leila points to the white futon couch inside the cabana. Luke secures his towel as best he can, all things considered, and pulls the futon out until it is flat.
“So, shut your eyes,” Leila says again.
Luke shuts his eyes.
Leila takes off Luke’s towel.
Luke feels his penis jump slightly, of its own accord. He wishes, for a moment, to cover himself.
Leila kisses Luke’s stomach.
Luke thinks he might, actually, fall over. He separates his feet into a wider, more secure stance. He wishes he had something to hold on to.
Luke’s eyes are closed and he is not sure where exactly Leila is, or in what position, other than in front of him, because her hands are not touching him, but he can imagine where the top of Leila’s head is relative to her mouth, which is now moving lower, and slightly to the right of his penis. Luke reaches out and touches what he feels to be Leila’s ear. Is she going to …?
“Whatever you do,” Leila says. “Do not open your eyes.”
Luke is about to ask why when Leila puts her mouth around Luke’s erection and her hands on his hips. Luke grabs Leila’s hair with both hands. He is worried for a moment, about Leila’s teeth, and then, quite soon, worried that something, some force of nature, a rogue comet striking the pool deck maybe, will stop Leila from doing what she is doing. Luke’s erection no longer seems foreign to his body, but connected in some deep and significant way to every part of it and now especially to a sound coming from the back of his throat. He can feel sweat on the backs of his knees. His stomach is jumping. Luke remembers the moment when you feel the wave lift the surfboard, lift you, realizes he is clutching Leila’s hair very hard, and releases it. For a moment his arms flail, pinwheeling.
“Wait,” Luke says, before he drowns.
Leila puts one hand on the base of his penis and slides her mouth away. The cool air is not as pleasant, now that he knows better. With his eyes shut, Luke tries to imagine what his face looks like with his eyes shut.
“Can I open my eyes?” Luke asks.
“No.”
“Well, then you have to let me touch you.”
“Okay. That’s fair.”
“I don’t want to presume,” Luke says dizzily. “But … do … you have a condom?”
Leila giggles.
“I love that you are standing there naked with a hard-on and you don’t want to presume. Presume away. I have a condom. I put one under the futon about an hour ago. Because I, unlike you, am a big presumer.”
“Am I supposed to search under the bed with my eyes closed?” Luke asks, trying to calm himself.
“Would you?”
“Yes,” Luke says, thickly. “Yes. Totally. I would. Yes.”
“No, I’ve got it,” Leila says. “Don’t worry.”
Luke leans down. Leila guides his hands to the top of the futon. He can feel her moving backward, on her knees, he thinks. Luke kneels down on the bed. Luke reminds himself that his brain knew how to see before his eyes ever saw anything, that he can do this, he will do this. He leans forward, reaches out a hand, which Leila guides to her waist. Luke pulls her to him and kisses her as hard as he can, which Leila seems to like because she pulls Luke down on top of her.
Leila’s rapid breathing, thinks Luke, is a sign that he is doing something correctly. He is momentarily flummoxed by the desire to do everything all at once, everything he has ever thought of, or imagined, and
the desire to slow each moment down, to better imprint it on his memory. They roll, this way and that, on the futon. Luke tries to position himself in such a way that his erection is not touching Leila, because he is not sure if that is something she would like and because his penis is now so sensitive that he is afraid of what any friction or contact with Leila might do to it. Luke puts his hand in between Leila’s legs. Leila makes sounds, which seem to Luke to be like the sounds he is making. Luke wonders why people ever do anything but this, really, when this is so clearly the best thing anyone can do, ever. Eventually, Luke finds himself on his hands and knees, above Leila. He hears Leila opening up the wrapping of the condom. Yes, thinks Luke. Yesyesyesyesyes. Leila slides the condom on Luke, who hopes that Leila will also guide him through the next step. Leila, one hand on Luke’s hip and one hand on his penis, pulls Luke downward, and, after a moment of angling, into her. Luke drops down to his elbows. Leila brings her legs up, her knees hugging his rib cage. Luke begins moving back and forth. Okay, thinks Luke. Okay, this is this is this is this is this, this, this, this, this. After awhile Luke senses, in the distance, a moment where he will no longer be able to contain all of this and its this-ness within his own body. This moment comes sooner than he thought, then comes, quite literally, in a series of jagged and contracted pulses. Luke’s shoulders jump toward his ears, he says, “Yah,” and “Shuh,” and “Guh,” with no intention of saying any of these things. He feels a singularly pleasant burn at the point of ejaculation, and a shuddering in his stomach. The front of his head throbs. Luke collapses on top of Leila, his open mouth in her hair, completely stunned.
Luke tastes Leila’s hair and is filled with a profound gratitude: to Leila, to the Japanese who invented futons, to Google maps for successfully navigating him to Brentwood, to BMW, the makers of fine and reliable automobiles, to Mark for bringing him to Los Angeles, to Mark and Sara for having conceived him, to his twelve generations of ancestral women, to women in general, to the quarter of a million years of human evolution and the gradual selection and adaptation of human beings, to meteorites, gases, molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, and the accordion big banging and crunching of the universe. To all things known and unknown that have led to the perfection of this particular moment.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
People who don’t believe in God but who think that there “must be something bigger than us” should go to the Sequoia National Park. There is something bigger than us. There are these trees. And you can see them and go right up to them and touch them and some of them are over two thousand years old and they are alive. They are real.
It was cool leading my dad through the mechanics of camp making: the setting up of the tent, hanging a line for drying clothes, building a fire, the rules for proper food storage, the mysteries of the butane cookstove. At the beginning of our trip, I was worried that Mark might be bored, with no activities other than hiking, and looking at trees, and swimming in streams, but on our very first night, as we settled into our sleeping bags in our new two-person tent, Mark said,
“This is just … perfect.”
We spent the second day hiking up to a fire lookout station. We wanted to do all the hikes labeled “strenuous” in the trail guide. When we got back to our camp, I got the vegetarian chili started and gave my dad my latest essay attempt, and he read it out loud, which was pretty hilarious.
“I’m telling you, Luke,” Mark said, once he finished, “this is good stuff here. I think you have the makings of a great screenplay. I can totally see this whole Sacred Journey thing.”
“Can you go and read it to the college admissions board?” I asked, spooning out two bowls of chili. “It’s a lot funnier with you doing all the voices.”
“I feel like I really nailed the Jeff character,” Mark said. “And your mom.”
“You’ve got her down,” I told him. “She sounds exactly like that. It was spooky.”
“Hey, Jeff said the number two would be significant in 2007, and here we are. The two of us.”
“Well, that proves it, then,” I said. “Numerology is accurate. We should call MIT.”
“What should I do?” Mark looked at me over his shoulder. “Should I be doing something?”
“We’re all set. You’re doing the dishes later.”
“So what was the question that you were supposed to be answering with this one?” Mark asked, about the essay.
“ ‘Talk about a special trip.’ I decided to do that one instead of ‘Describe your strongest character trait.’ Although I sort of got to that one too.” I brought the chili over to the campfire and handed a bowl to Mark.
“You think your strongest character trait is your blood type?” he asked. “What do you think my strongest character trait is?”
I ate some chili while considering this.
“Wait, don’t answer,” he said. “I don’t want to know. What are some other questions?”
“ ‘What do you plan to do with your college degree?’ ” I tried to remember what on my list I hadn’t gotten to yet. “ ‘Where do you see yourself career-wise ten years from now? Reveal your life philosophy. Do you maintain strong beliefs and adhere to a philosophy? How do you solve moral dilemmas?’ ”
“Jesus. I’m glad I don’t have to answer any of that. How do you solve moral dilemmas?”
“I guess I pretty much go with the basic system,” I said. “If you say to yourself, I don’t want to do that, but it’s okay if other people do, then it’s not a moral thing, it’s a matter of personal taste. But if you say to yourself, I don’t want to do that and I don’t want anybody else to do it either, and I think people who do that should be punished, and I would be wrong not to punish them for doing that, then that is something that’s a moral absolute.”
I’m not actually sure whether I do this or if it’s just how I think I should do it.
“What if there is something that you feel is right but everyone else thinks is wrong?” he asked.
“Then you’re a psychopath,” I laughed. “Or a genius. But people like Galileo, they had evidence for believing that something was right even though almost everyone else thought it was wrong. That’s why I think you should have evidence for all of your beliefs. Otherwise it’s more just a hope.”
“So, okay,” he said. “Your being a vegetarian, is that a moral thing? This chili is kick-ass, by the way.”
“Thanks. Actually no, I’m not even sure that I can say absolutely that cruelty to animals is morally wrong.”
“Hold up,” Mark said. “What?”
I like testing out ideas on Mark.
“Well, animal testing was used to come up with a vaccine for polio and smallpox, and all kinds of other medical breakthroughs. I guess lab work on animals isn’t quite as gruesome as it used to be, but people are still giving animals diseases and removing parts of their brains or other organs. And if you are a vegetarian because you don’t believe in cruelty to animals, then you shouldn’t accept vaccines made through animal-testing technology. And if someone said, ‘Hey, we might have a cure for spinal meningitis but we need to test on a couple of hundred rats first,’ you would have to say, ‘No, I don’t think you should, and I hope you lose all your funding and your lab is shut down.’ You would have to say that even if you had a kid with spinal meningitis who was in agony. I don’t think I could do that.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty intense.”
“And you know, there isn’t anything on this planet that actually wants to be eaten,” I continued, getting into it. “A head of broccoli doesn’t want to be eaten any more than a cow does. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t produce toxins. But even organically grown vegetables have toxins because that’s how plants try to protect themselves.”
“So this chili I am enjoying contains beans that you murdered,” Mark said thoughtfully. “You boiled them alive, in cold blood, you bastard.”
“I’m a mass murderer of vegetables,” I agreed.
“So why are you a vegetarian, then?”
“I guess I’ve only really thought it through recently,” I admitted. “So I’m not sure. I don’t know where I stand now actually. At Leila’s house I ate an eel.”
“You ate an eel?”
“She had sushi,” I explained. “I always thought that sushi looked really interesting. Like, a big plate of ham, that looks weird to me, and I don’t like the smell, but I like the smell of seaweed and wasabi.”
“How was it?” Mark asked. “The eel?”
“It was really good,” I sighed. “Actually.”
“You don’t think vegetables have a soul or anything like that, though?” he asked.
“I don’t think I have a soul, remember,” I reminded him.
“Okay, this conversation is getting really deep. Let’s talk about sports. Or sex.”
I tried to make my face blank.
“You going to tell me about how you had sex or not?” Mark stood up to get another beer from the cooler.
“Okay,” I said, after a minute. “How did you know?”
“I’m psychic. No, kidding. It was in my numerology reading. I have the numbers of a Universal Sage and I was told that in 2007 my son was going to get laid.”
“For real, how did you know?”
“My swim shorts have hetero vibe on them now.”
I laughed, a little bit hysterically maybe. Mark settled himself back down in his camp chair.
“I guessed,” he said. “And you had that look in your eye the day after.”
“What look?”
“I’m just giving you a hard time. You don’t have to tell me.”
“Well,” I said, hesitating. “Well, yeah, I did.”
“You wear a condom?”
“Yeah.”
“You had a good time?”
“Yeah.”
“I actually wasn’t sure if you did it or not. Because you still wanted to go camping. I thought maybe you’d be all about this girl now.”
“She left for London. But I would have wanted to go camping anyway. This is almost our last week together.”
“For the summer,” he said. “But we’ve got the rest of our lives, right?”
