seemed studied. Her lips, which were full and fleshy, opened and closed around his like a suckerfish in the throes of some mating ritual. Part of him liked the bizarre, almost nursing, sensation—something she had cultivated in her considerable experience. However, he was not sure he liked her tongue swabbing out his mouth. He could faintly detect the orange juice behind other tastes.
As he feared, his mind filled with biology-class videos of microbes teeming in human saliva. Then he became fixed on the disgusting white bacterial gunk that collects on the back of human tongues from the lack of oxygen and makes for sulfur-foul breath.
Then he saw her as one of those colored anatomy-book drawings of the digestive system—her insides a pack of shiny red organs and alimentary tubes leading from her mouth down through twenty feet of twisty yellow intestines partly full of feces.
He squeezed down on those images, pressed them into a small box, and stomped it with his heel. And for a blessed moment, the assault was over.
As Nicole moved against his hand and closed her eyes to groaning sounds, Brendan could not help but think that he was engaged in one of the highest fantasies of the male breed: fondling the sex of a gorgeous, compliant sixteen-year-old. He knew he should feel special, even privileged—for some men would kill for the opportunity. And while he watched Nicole writhe, he could not help but wonder at human sexuality—how in the zoological kingdom we were the only species that copulated face-to-face: An evolutionary marvel whose anatomy had evolved for the look of love-face-to-face, man to woman: passion
And he had none.
“Do you like that?”
“How ‘bout this?” And she then slipped to her knees and lowered his shorts.
His penis stuck out from his pubic hairs like an overgrown slug. It was mortifying. Here was Nicole DaFoe, the teenage equivalent to the Whore of Babylon, his own momentary Lolita on her knees performing the supreme male fantasy, and he couldn’t even summon a glandular twitch.
Nicole tried everything, rubbing her breasts against him, twiddling him, even kissing him. Still nothing, though he was straining with all he had to engorge himself with blood. But nothing. It was awful. Where were the
She did everything possible—humming, moaning and groaning. It was horrible—the ultimate curse, but for old men, like Richard, not a healthy adolescent who should be pulsing with magma heat.
As he pushed with all he had to stiffen himself, fighting the damning humiliation, a side-pocket awareness struck him: Not how experienced Nicole was, but how rote her movement. As he watched her head move below him, she appeared to him as a mechanical doll running through a naughty little program, not aroused, just studied. Robotic. Even her kissing lacked genuine heat. She didn’t even breathe heavily.
He was about to push her head away, when in the light his eyes caught something in her hair. He put his hands on her head pretending to caress her. As he spread her hair, he could see a cluster of small white nubbinlike scars barely visible about an inch behind her forehead hairline and running across the side of her head.
Suddenly Nicole froze. “What are you doing?” Instantly she was upright.
“Y-you’ve got the same scars I have.”
Nicole’s face shifted as if trying to land on the right expression. “What?”
He lowered his head and parted his hair where the nurse had shaved. “See?” he said, showing her in the mirror. Then he moved his hand to show her what he’d seen under her hair, but she pulled away. “Let me show you.”
“Get out,” she said. He could not tell if the blaze in her eyes meant that she was angry with him for the aborted sex, or scared.
“Let me show you. Th-they’re little white dots.”
“From chicken pox.”
“Chicken pox? No,” he insisted. “Ch-chicken pox scars would be r-r-random. These are bunched together. And they’re in the same place as mine.”
Nicole’s face hardened. “I told you I had chicken pox. I remember it was all over my face and head.”
Brendan shook his head. “Not chicken pox.”
“Then what are they?”
“Somebody did something to our heads when we were kids.”
“Shut up. Scars are long lines not little white dots.”
“I don’t know how, but somebody did something—to both of us. I have images and d-dreams of hospital rooms, of w-w-white lights and monitors, of people with surgical masks. And you’ve got the same scars and that t- t-tattoo I keep seeing. Elephants with hands grabbing at me.”
She started away. “That’s your problem.”
He caught her arm. “N-no. It’s too much of a coincidence. I’m t-telling you we’re c-connected somehow. Maybe we were out of hand, and they did some kind of lobotomy or s-something on us.”
Nicole’s eyes got very small, like ball bearings. “You’re nuts. You’re also a faggot.”
“No I’m not.”
“You’re a goddamn faggot, and that’s what this is all about.” It was the first time he heard a tinge of emotion in her voice. But he wasn’t sure if it was anger or fear.
“No.”
“That’s not it.” He pulled his pants back up and zipped his fly.
“You’re gay, and you’re giving me all this other shit.”
“No, I’m not gay.”
“Then you’re a chickenshit virgin. The big love-poetry guy can’t get it up for a first-class BJ.”
It wasn’t her bluntness that surprised him, but the edge in her words.
As she started away again, he said, “What about you? Is it worth it?”
Her head snapped around for an explanation. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I know why you’re doing this, because I saw you with your teacher. This is your way of b-b-buying my silence.”
Nicole opened her mouth to protest, but caught herself.
“If the word got out you were having an affair with your teacher, you’d lose your grade, and the award, and he’d be out of a job. That’s what this is all about. Not because you like me, or even sex.”
Expressions flitted across her face like the things that scurried under a rock in damp soil. In a low menacing voice, she said, “Don’t you dare say anything.” When he didn’t respond, she said,
The wincing pain nearly took his breath away. She wrapped a towel around herself. “You d-d-d-don’t even enjoy it.”
“Enjoy what?”
“S-sex.”
“What do you know?”
“I th-think you don’t. I th-think you don’t enjoy this. I th-think sex is just how you g-g-get what you want.
