Chapter 26: What I’d Do for Love

My movie date with Mary to see Araby was fun. A factory worker is in a bad accident and a teenager is sent to his home to collect some possessions. He finds a diary of his travels. The rest of the movie is the kid vicariously living the journey of the laborer’s life over the past ten years.

“It’s all so futile,” Mary sighed as we got in the car to go back to the dorm. “We snatch little moments of happiness out of a life of hopelessness and convince ourselves that it is all worth living. It was beautiful and all too painful at the same time.”

“My high school classmate killed himself,” I said. “It was just at the time Jas and I were discovering sex. He was Sarah Lynn’s best friend and she tore apart the police department in her commencement speech. After that, a bunch of us gathered at my Granddad’s place and eventually, the six of us bonded and made our little family. Out of the ashes.”

“You’d have gotten together anyway. Maybe not all of you. You might have needed a catalyst of some kind to get all of you into one unit, but...”

Mary looked into my eyes and held me there. She leaned forward and kissed me. It was soft and almost as sad as the movie we’d just watched. I gently put my hand on her shoulder and she stroked my cheek.

“Jett, I don’t know that we have the kind of catalyst that will stick us together,” she sighed. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want to try. I don’t want to just have fun. You know? It doesn’t mean I don’t want to have sex. I just don’t know if we have the bonding agents that will hold us together on the canvas.”

“Spoken like a true artist,” I chuckled. “We all like you, Mary. Maybe that’s a drawback. You’re sexy as hell. And funny. But we ... I won’t try to force you someplace you won’t fit in.”

“I don’t think you’ll have to do any forcing when it comes time to fit in me.” Her mouth twitched and we slammed together in another intense kiss. Somewhere along the line, my hand landed on her thigh and started sliding upward. “Um ... Jett, it’s not a good time to be playing around down there. Not that I wouldn’t like to, but it’s messy.”

“If we were someplace with a bed, I’d just say let’s go get messy,” I laughed. “Probably not the best idea clothed and in the car. And as much as I like playing around down there, that isn’t the only reason I go out with you.”

“Yeah. It’s not a bad reason, though. I’m not, like, inexperienced, you know. It was pretty easy to have sex in high school. Guys couldn’t wait to dip into the mystery girl who was always covered up. But no one really got interested in having a relationship with the ‘nervous girl.’ They couldn’t relax. And they wanted me naked. I just couldn’t do that. When the time’s right, I’ll get naked with you, Jett. I think. Just ... you know ... take it slow.”

“Whatever pace you say, Mary. I’m sort of falling for you.”

“You fall kind of easily. Remember, I’ve got to fall six times if this is ever going anywhere. We can kiss some more.”

We did and Mary taught me about how she liked to have her nipples twisted with the bar pierced through them. We didn’t make it all the way to orgasms, but we were damned exhausted by the time she got out of the car and went to her dorm.

Mary’s period marked the beginning of what the girls called Shark Week. Over the next ten days, there was a constant exchange of girls who were bloated, horny, crabby, cramping, bleeding, bitchy, clingy, depressed, manic, and crying. As Jas referred to it, there was ‘blood in the water.’

In my book, it was like trying to connect to a WiFi network without the WEP code.

“Don’t touch me unless you’ve got a tampon crammed up your ass!”

“Rub my tummy. Not down there.”

“Hold me.”

“How can you be so stupid?”

“I’m hungry.”

“Ow! Ow! Ow!”

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.”

I wasn’t sure but what the longer we lived together, the worse it got. One played off another and seemed devoted to outdoing everyone else. And add to my five roommates, Mary and Eva, who seemed to be over to ‘study’ every night that week.

And forget about painting. “You’re so selfish. I need you.”

A guy needs a little recovery time between forays into the mine field of menstruating girlfriends. I called Derek and we got together for a latte Wednesday afternoon.

“How can you stand it?” Derek laughed when I’d given him a rundown of circumstances at home. “I’d run out of the house screaming. You know there’s an order of monks who make cheese in the next county. I hear they are looking for recruits. They take a vow of silence and you are only allowed one sentence a year.”

“That is such an old joke,” I moaned. “I’m tired of all this bickering about oatmeal.”

“It just shows that no matter how you change your circumstances, you’ll find something to piss about,” he said.

“That’s true enough. Just think: I could still be living with my mother.”

I was really thinking about my family and how my mother was insane about sterilizing everything I touched and planning every detail of my life. Since I moved out, we had a much better relationship. About once a month, I took one of my girlfriends home with me for Sunday dinner. It was fun. Unfortunately, Derek went suddenly silent as he stared at his coffee.

“Hey. What is it?”

“Um ... Dee and I spent a lot of time with each other—in each other’s house—before this summer. It’s not like we didn’t know what the parents were like. But actually living together full time has its challenges.” Derek sighed. “It’s so different than I expected.”

“Are you ... like ... living together together? Um ... I thought you were in the guest room.”

“Not anymore. I ... um ... We did it in August. Had sex. Made love. Moved into her room together.”

“And her parents are okay with all that?”

“They practically strewed rose petals in our path. I tell you, Jett, they have been planning this with my parents for eighteen years. Maybe longer. Our parents were college friends, you know. We were practically conceived in the same bed.”

“It sounds like you’ve got it all then. Your parents are paying for college. You’re living with the love of your life. Her mom cooks and cleans for you. You live rent-free. What’s to complain about?”

“It’s weird to have sex every night down the hall from her parents and next door to her little brother. It’s like they know what we’re doing every time we close the door to our room. It’s the kind of smile they have when we emerge again. I mean, they’re right. We were having sex. I don’t know how you can keep up with five girls. Dee and I have sex all the time! It’s like we went through eighteen and a half years being close and loving and friends, and then we had sex and now that’s all we ever do. All the fucking time!“

“I’d never have thought Dee was a nympho,” I laughed. “Or that you were a sex maniac.”

“That’s the thing, you know? It worries me. Remember when we first got into Minecraft? We played all the time. Our parents confiscated the controllers until our homework was done and unplugged the Xbox at eleven at night so we’d sleep. Then one day I came in with my controller, ready to play, and Dee had Final Fantasy XV out. We never played Minecraft again. I’m afraid she’ll be like that with sex. One day I’ll walk into the bedroom and start to undress and she’ll say, ‘Let’s play canasta.’ It will all be over.”

“I think sex stimulates different brain-centers than games,” I guessed. “You make it good for her, don’t you? I mean, Kelly...”

“I screwed things up so badly with Kelly. Shit. I still feel like I owe her an apology or ten. I’m never going to treat Dee like that. We downloaded a book.”

“What kind of book?”

“How to sexually satisfy your partner and have a lifelong sexual relationship. Our parents gave it to us.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. It was right after we moved out of your Granddad’s place. We were in our blanket fort in the basement and my phone chimed that I had a new book synchronizing. We read it all that night and started downloading others. You know, the stuff we all did online was nothing compared to the kind of stuff that’s possible when two people put their parts together IRL.”

“I found that out. Maybe I need to borrow that book. But that was like back in June! And it took you until mid-August to put the parts together?”

“We did a lot of ... um ... experimenting before that. We found a dozen more books. Indian, Japanese, Chinese. They’re all more interesting than the straight sex American books. We compared anatomy, methods of stimulating each other, positions. Then one night, we started kissing. Jett! They need to write a book about kissing! I mean, we had little pecks on the cheek and even a smooch on the lips before, but we’d been reading The Kama Sutra one night and for some unknown reason we just kissed each other.”

“That has been an experience I’m loving at every opportunity.”

“Yeah, but ... The downside about how we were raised together, you know from sharing a crib onward, is that we were sort of like brother and sister. We’d seen each other, watched each other develop, and really loved each other. But we didn’t get turned on by each other. Who’d kiss his sister? And when we started reading all the sex books, it was like maybe someday we’d find someone to actually do all this stuff with, but we didn’t think it would be each other. Then that kiss!” Derek’s eyes glazed over as if he was reliving the kiss right then. “Who knew how it connected everything. We made love all night long. I’ve always loved Dee. I just didn’t think the sex stuff was part of it. Wow! Just, wow!”