obliterated Cori’s memories
In this last seduction MalKai was tugging on needs Cori didn’t know existed and answering questions Cori didn’t ask. He was leading Cori down an invisible orchid-lined path, heavy with the scent of deja vu and lust.
Amidst the heady chain of events, Cori’s mind had become a blackboard upon which complex theorems were frantically being worked out. Spurred by velvet touches and hinging on fear, Cori nervously built the type of mathematical sentences he had learned could prove any geometric fact. “If someone sees me, then the whole world will perceive me as abnormal.” “If I do this, then everything I have done up until this day will be called into question.” “If I enjoy this interaction, then what am I?”
The chalk snapped in Cori’s mind and left him solutionless. Math abandoned, Cori offered a shaky-fingered reply to MalKai’s advances. Their hands began to dance. First teasing palm-stroking with fingers, then fingertips rubbing against each other. MalKai’s fingers were no longer alone in their advances. Cori’s fingers ceased their trembling. Both hands mirrored the intimate joining of lovers. The undulations of their hands fascinated Cori. He sighed in wonder at how such simple movements could shake him to his core.
MalKai’s fingers soon grew tired of palm stroking. They began to wander to Cori’s wrist, up his arm to Cori’s shoulder, and to the nape of his neck. They lingered there for a second. Long enough for MalKai to contemplate the next move…
…and also for Cori to contemplate his. Cori wanted to believe the dancing hands were the climax of this daring adventure. Thought that hand-fucking with a total stranger was risque enough to merit a life-long memory. He didn’t realize that the film had just started, the theme music was playing, the opening credits were rolling, and he was the leading lady. Anyone peeping from afar, watching the seduction play out as if on the silver screen, knew where Cori would be in scene two:
Naked, fingers in mouth, chest heaving, lips moist from nervous licking, lowered eyes, staccato breath, belly trembling, body spread across bedsheets… or grass… flared nostrils.
Cori kept replaying how he had gotten to this point. How was it that he had landed under an oak tree in the web of a velvety hand-fucker whose motions, intent on turning him out in plain view of the entire world, had him pressing through the fly of his new silk boxers. Cori’s eyes closed involuntarily when he felt MalKai’s hand on his chest. A muscle he didn’t know existed, twitched in his groin. His ears were burning with embarrassment. Could anyone see him?
The seducer stares ahead toward the end of the road, with his head cocked at a devious angle, calculating how long it will take to get there. The seduced looks behind at the beginning of the road and, with his brow creased in concern, wonders how it slipped so far away. Cori’s entire life, it could be argued, was an attempt to avoid any event such as this one. For years, he discretely avoided eye contact with men who wore their privacy in public like an expensive coat of chinchilla. Didn’t want to rub shoulders with those who stood outside their closets, for fear of contamination. Purposely refused his hand’s desire to linger on the shoulder of an especially intriguing friend. Newspaper clips announcing trysts in the park left a bitter taste in his mouth. That he could be so caught up as to release control out in the open and let down his guard unnerved him.
This was a propless seduction. There was no sensual wailing floating in the air, no liquid intoxicant on ice, and no satin sheets beneath Cori’s back. In fact there was nothing Cori could blame his transgression on. He was resting against the dirty bark of an old tree atop a hill covered with dying grass. Nothing short of a miracle could have brought Cori to this point—and the miracle was a touch so utterly sensual, an understanding so undeniably sexual, that it could not be ignored. Every refusal Cori had forced his body to accept in the past decade, delivered him here—a willing participant—in MalKai’s lap. Each little impulse he had previously suppressed quietly collected itself into an explosive mass, and now, two clasped palms had coaxed the explosion.
If there were a movie camera hovering somewhere in the skies, as Cori imagined there must be at this seminal point in his life, it would close in on the oak tree that sheltered the seduction. From a great distance, it would reveal the green silhouette before swooping through twisted, leafy branches to reveal Cori and MalKai’s heated embrace at the tree’s base. The camera would then pan over MalKai’s shoulder to reveal a brown moth resting on the tree bark and close in on the moth’s wings as it fluttered by, tickling the kissers and rousing them from their soul sucking.
The battle within Cori had been won. The mutiny was complete. Now, Cori had forgotten there had been any dissent, submitted completely to the lips that had devoured his fear, his indecision, his revulsion—and he couldn’t wait. Cori couldn’t wait to break down barriers and go where he had never gone before. To bring shame upon his family. To participate in an act he would never verbalize to anyone. To create a memory to file next to his afternoon pleasure trips with his cousin. Only this time, it could not be excused by age. Only this time, there would be no aunt to say, “Don’t worry, they’re just little boys.” There would only be condemning eyes and accusing fingers.
Arms encircled and crushed solitude from Cori’s lonely body. Lips soothed, and pushed tenderness through his teeth, down his throat. Hands left a trail of shivers along his passion-warmed skin. Cori had often found peace—or at least momentary joy—crushing some woman in his embrace. But he had never been crushed. Nor had he been seduced. Cori had never been the one with thoughts of escape up until the last moment.
Yet here he lay, under the boughs of an oak, ready to agree to anything this thick-fingered stranger suggested. A dog squeezed out a marathon of barks without stopping for breath. A painfully sweet bursting feeling split through Cori’s chest. His cells wanted to know the contours and textures of MalKai’s velvet skin, but his mind launched one last protest. He stood with his toes hanging off the brink of discovery and felt the intense desire to shuffle backward to a safer spot. His will faltered: did he really want to uncover the secrets he was coaxing out of hiding? Certainly he could live life without knowing what it’s like to be fucked under an oak tree by a velvet stranger. He took one more glance back to that point at the beginning of the road, but it was too late to turn back. This was happening now.
This is the now, Cori, and those are lips inching up the back of your neck. This is the now, and you don’t know the owner of those lips, you’ve just met him under this tree. You can’t take him home to meet your family or to your apartment to help you paint your walls. You don’t even know if you will see him again.
Ignoring his fresh whispers of doubt, Cori bravely turned his face to MalKai’s and opened himself under the caress of the breeze and the watchful eyes of the skies. It was all-consuming curiosity that made Cori unbutton the top of his shirt. It was vanity that made him think of all the women who had ever loved him. It was pride that made him consider how shocked they would be to find him here—half naked, crushed in a strange man’s embrace.
All philosophy went out of the door when MalKai attacked Cori’s lips with a finality that shook Cori to his bones. MalKai pressed his body against Cori’s. Cori’s eyes rolled back in their sockets, and his shoulders dropped into relaxation. He boldly began a grind that signaled he had left all questions and doubts behind—or at least swallowed them, so that they might resurface at a less critical time.
When Cori opened his eyes he was startled to find himself reclining on one of the wide branches of the oak tree. His eyes felt heavy like they did when sleep had a powerful hold upon him. His mind was as jumbled and confused as it was whenever he was abruptly disturbed in the middle of an intense dream. He saw what looked like large moth wings folding down into MalKai’s back. Under the intensity of the moment he could not focus on supernatural visions.
The birds must have been shocked: Cori and MalKai’s bare backs writhed and undulated as the sensations traveled up and down their spines. The squirrels must have been pissed: Cori and MalKai jerked like epileptics,
