Chapter 33

We buttoned up and headed out into the cold air, where another snow flurry entertained us. She led me off campus again, a couple of blocks away to an old brick apartment building. I tried to restart the lesson on the way, but she told me to wait because she couldn’t write them down while walking.

She took the stairs to the third floor. I’m pretty sure the elevator was working, but she was used to walking everywhere. She let us in to her apartment and told me I could hang my coat in the closet just inside the door.

It was surprisingly neat and uncluttered. It was an old building, but the rooms were clean and well kept. “My flatmate -- excuse me, my roommate -- is staying with her boyfriend until Sunday, so she won’t interrupt us while you are teaching me these words. I will make real coffee. You think about what is next on the list until I bring it.”

She moved determinedly off to the kitchen from which I heard kitchen sounds. So now I had to start tutoring her in all the myriad ways Americans described various sex acts, some of which were pretty blunt.

In a few minutes she brought out a tray with a small coffeepot, sugar and two cups. “Now you will see what real coffee tastes like. Why is it so hard for cafes to learn to make coffee correctly? We learn to do it as children.”

I just shook my head to say that I didn’t understand it either, rather than get into a discussion of the many failures of American society, headed by its inability to make proper coffee.

I took a sip and thought, this is how she will get through graduate school. She will study twenty hours a day because she will be unable to sleep. I could feel the caffeine shooting through my bloodstream, slapping me awake.

She had taken out her notebook again. “Go on. I’m ready.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay. Moving on. I’d mostly finished with the words for the sexual parts of the body, male and female. Now it’s the various ways to have sex, and the common or vulgar words used to describe it.

“The most common word, of course, is fuck. We already talked about that in the context of noun and adjective and expletive.”

She got a puzzled look on her face. I said, “Expletive?” She nodded.

“It’s a word used as in interjection in a conversation, usually coarse or profane, meant to express surprise, annoyance, anger, disappointment, and so on. If I dropped my dinner plate on the floor I might say, “Fuck! That was careless.” Fuck is used as an expletive.”

“I like that word. ‘Expletive’, I mean.”

“So when fuck is used as a verb, it means sexual intercourse, inserting the penis into the vagina. Someone might say to their girlfriend, ‘I want to fuck your pussy until we both cum’. He probably won’t last more than two minutes, but sex always has its share of unfulfilled promises.”

Here she laughed out loud, recognizing the truth of it across nations.

“But he could also say ‘I want to fuck your ass’ or ‘I’m going to fuck your mouth’ or ‘I’m going to fuck your tits’. So basically fucking is inserting the penis somewhere with sexual intent. A woman could say it, too. ‘I’m going to fuck your dick until you beg me to cum’. So fuck turns out to be a pretty useful word, if you don’t care what the people around you think about you.

“There are lots of variants. If you are fond of the person you want to have sex with, you might say ‘Let’s make love’ instead of ‘Let’s fuck’, to emphasize that there is an emotional component to it. You could say you want to ‘sleep with’ someone if you don’t yet know if there’s an emotional element but you’re still horny. Remember that one?

“A man might say that he wants to ‘lay’ a woman by way of saying he wants to have sex with her. A woman might say that she wants to ‘get laid’, meaning she wants someone to have sex with her. Passive rather than active verb.

“A guy could say he wants to ‘screw’ or ‘bonk’ someone, or ‘shag’ or ‘bang’ or ‘hump’ them. He might complain to his friends that he needs to ‘get some nookie’, meaning he’s horny. Either a man or a woman could say that they want to ‘get it on’, meaning to have sex, or they could say ‘Let’s fool around’ to the other.”

I took some more coffee. I was getting wired.

“All those mostly refer to standard intercourse. Then there are the variants, like oral and anal sex, or particular fetishes.”

Again, she got that puzzled look, and I guessed it was fetish, which was unlikely to arise in the context of an English class.

“Fetish? That one?” She nodded, pen poised.

“It means, like, an erotic interest in some part of the body which is not normally considered erotic, like feet, or elbows. Or it could mean a particular activity that causes one person to become aroused. For example, if a person finds sexual arousal in being submissive, or seeing their partner dressed in leather or vinyl, or maybe they enjoy being whipped and abused, like masochism.”

“Okay,” she said, “I think I know what you mean. A fetish, like a compulsion, but sexual.”

“Exactly! Anyway, maybe we’ll get to that later. So back to sexual activities. Oral sex. We’ll start with women doing men. The clinical term is fellatio, meaning taking the penis into the mouth and using lips and tongue on it. But there are lots of cruder terms. ‘Giving head’ is common usage, as is ‘blow job’. It’s also called ‘going down on’ your man, or ‘sucking dick’ or ‘cock sucking’. If someone wants to be cute in describing it, they might say that the woman is ‘playing the skin flute’.

“If a guy asks a woman to ‘suck him off’, it means to give him oral sex until he ejaculates in her mouth.

“When the woman takes the man’s penis all the way into her throat it’s usually called ‘deep throat’, after the movie. Sometimes it’s called, from the man’s perspective, ‘fucking the throat’ or ‘throat fucking’. From the woman’s perspective, she could be said to be ‘throating her man’. “

I finished the coffee in my cup and she immediately poured me more. I wasn’t sure if I would sleep at all tonight.

“All right. A man performing oral sex on a woman can also be said to be ‘giving head’. The formal word is cunnilingus, but the crude terms are ‘eating her pussy’, or ‘eating her out’, or ‘sucking her clit’. It might be called ‘muff diving’ or ‘carpet munching’ or ‘going down on her’.

“Of course, a couple could perform oral sex simultaneously on each other. In that case, they’re said to be ‘doing 69’.

The same puzzled look came over her and she wrinkled her forehead. I took her pencil and drew the figures 6 and 9 next to each other in her notepad. She stared at them until she suddenly laughed, having understood the phrase.

“Okay, there are probably lots more but that’s enough to get you started. On to anal sex. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

“We have had this discussion. Why are you asking me again? Go on.”

“I was giving you the opportunity to exit gracefully. Very well. Anal sex. More formal words are ‘sodomy’ and ‘buggery’. That last one your English teacher might have encountered, since it’s very British. Other terms are ‘butt sex’ or ‘butt fucking’ or ‘ass fucking’ or ‘taking the back road’, or maybe ‘going in the back door’. Someone who is the recipient of anal sex is ‘taking it up the ass’ or ‘being reamed’.

“People sometimes say that they like it ‘Greek style’, meaning they like anal sex. A person might also say that they like ‘cornholing’, meaning they like fucking someone’s ass. Or a person might like ‘being cornholed’ as the recipient. There’s a lot more esoteric terms for it, but those are the common ones.

“Giulia, I’m starting to feel a bit awkward about this. I appreciate that you are so dedicated to learning the language, but this is starting to feel a bit pervy to me.”

“What is this word? Par-vee?”

“Pervy, short for perverted, meaning abnormal or unnatural, especially in a sexual context. A grown man who is attracted to very young girls or boys is pervy. If he acts on it, he is a pedophile.”

“Pervy. I like it. I’ve run into a few of them when I was a girl. Continue.”

“Getting towards the end now. Group sex, meaning more than two people involved in sex. The most common form is a ‘threesome’, meaning three people making love at the same time. It could be two men and a woman, or a man and two women. Or it could be three of the same sex. Let’s not be judgmental. So ‘having a threesome’ means having sex with two other people at the same time.

“Groups larger than that could be an orgy, meaning a mixed group of people having sex with whoever they choose, changing partners whenever they like. It could also be a ‘gangbang’, which usually means a woman having sex with multiple men, sometimes sequentially, sometimes with several at a time while others look on. It might be a ‘blowbang’, where a woman gives head to multiple men until they ejaculate on her.

“And, by the way, you can switch genders, too. A gangbang could be multiple women having sex with one man. Few of us are that lucky.” She snorted.

“A person who allows a man to ejaculate on her face is said to ‘take a facial’. The person could be either male or female, though it’s usually a woman. And, by the way, the term facial in the everyday world refers to skin treatments and creams to make the face smooth and attractive. Don’t confuse the two meanings.

“A woman who gets off by having multiple men ejaculate on her face and body is getting ‘bukkake’. The term is originally Japanese, I think, but I don’t know its origin. Sometimes they call it ‘getting a cum bath’ or ‘having jizz face’.

“A woman having sex with two men while on her hands and knees, with one man screwing her from behind, and the other with his cock in her mouth, is said to be ‘spitroasted’, like a piece of meat being roasted on a spit over a fire.

“A woman with one dick in her vagina and another in her ass is said to be ‘DP’d’, for double penetration.” She looked slightly shocked at this. Maybe she didn’t have as much experience as I’d guessed.

“There are variations, of course. There are some women -- and men, for that matter -- who like having more than one penis in their vagina or anus. That’s called vaginal double penetration or anal double penetration. They’re sometimes shortened to VDP and ADP.”

I finished the second cup of coffee and she reached for the coffeepot. I stopped her before she was able to pour. “Giulia, I will not sleep till next Thursday and it’s your fault.” She smirked at me.

“We’re about done. Everything after this gets into specialized sex, like bondage and discipline, or sado-masochism, that I don’t know much about and don’t particularly care for. And as long as you’re taking notes, it’s usually referred to as the four letters BDSM, in case anyone asks you to one of their parties.”

She laughed at that. “I will call you up to accompany me. You will have to bring your own whip. I don’t have a spare.” I couldn’t tell if she was joking.

I asked to use her bathroom, as I had had three cups of coffee in the space of a couple of hours. I felt better after I was done, washed my hands and splashed some water on my face.

When I came out she was putting the empty cups back on the tray. “Give me a moment,” she said. I heard her putting the things in the sink and she came back out, wiping her hands on the legs of her jeans.

“I think,” she said, “that I might want a few minutes to review these. There are a lot of new words, and I would hate to misuse them accidentally.”

“I’m sure that the person you were with would forgive you.”

She smiled pleasantly at me as she picked up her notebook. I decided to look into her epicenter again.

She was, I saw, feeling a little uncertainty at all the new material she would have to learn, while at the same time being titillated at hearing new words for sexual activities she had heard of before, in Italian. Somehow they seemed more exciting and daring when expressed in a new language. I would probably feel the same thing when she started to teach me the Italian equivalents.

No, there’s something else here. Sure, there was some arousal at learning new words for these activities, but there was an underlying frustration because ... because she was horny! She was thinking of her boyfriend who’d broken up with her when she announced that she was going to America for school and would be gone for at least four years. He didn’t want her to leave, had thought they would make a life together and she would have his babies. She hadn’t had sex since she left. Just her and her favorite dildo!

That’s what I was seeing. She was turned on, and not sure what she should do about it, as she’d just met me and, while she hadn’t asked directly, could see that I was a few years younger than her. She was likely in her early to mid-twenties, and I ... was not. Was it ‘pervy’, she was asking herself, to feel attraction to this younger guy?

Well, it was nice of her, I thought, to have my well-being at heart, and to not wish to inflict any trauma on me by forcing me into sex with an older woman. I believed that I could work through the shock.

She was still studying her notebook, really quite focused on it. I channeled a feather brushing her clit, and a mink glove brushing her nipples, and waited.

She was trying to find a more comfortable position, crossing and uncrossing her legs, shifting forward on the couch cushion. I could hear her breathing picking up and saw her licking her dry lips.

She looked up at me. “I think I have many of these memorized, but I never know for certain until I try to use them in a sentence, for practice. Will you tell me if I am saying them right?”

I told her I would, and I could see her formulating her phrases before she started.

“Okay. Only for practice, you understand. Here I go. ‘All this talk about body parts and sex has gotten me horny.’ Is that right?”

I nodded.

“I can feel my nipples getting stiff..., no, hard, and my pussy is getting wet. My clit is so sensitive now that I am afraid to move, because my pants will rub against it. I am thinking how nice a hard penis -- no, wait, a stiff dick -- would feel now. Is that the way, Carter?”

“Just like that, Giulia.”

“I think it would take only about a minute of a tongue on my clit before I go off like a firecracker. Then I would like to take a ... a cock in my throat until my partner was almost ready to cum, then I’d ask him to fuck my cunt until I cum. I would cum so hard I would wake the neighbors. How was that?”

“If I didn’t know that you were just practicing, I’d think you were ready to tear off your clothes right now. Hard to believe you just learned these words.”

“This is how I learn things, by using them just after I have learned them. That helps me to understand them and commit them to memory. Are you ready to learn some Italian phrases? The dirty ones?”

“I am always trying to improve myself. You never know when you might meet a sexy Italian woman and need those phrases desperately.”

She smirked at me. “What is the phrase in English? Oh, ‘In your dreams’. But if by some luck you do find an Italian woman desperate enough, I’ll teach you. Let’s start with swear words, like you did. First one. A fanabla! It means, ‘go to hell!’. Also Bacha ma culo! That means, ‘kiss my back end.’ No, wait, that’s not right. Oh, ‘kiss my ass’.

I said it, half to myself, to get my tongue around it.

“You can call somebody a bastard -- you taught me that one earlier -- with almost the same word in Italian. It’s bastardo. Or you might call a woman a whore or a slut, saying she’s una puttana or una baldracca.

“What was the English word you taught me earlier? It was ... it was... ‘expletive’. Good word. Anyway, Italian has lots of expletives. Cazzata means bullshit. An Italian expletive. Another one is Che palle! It means, like, ‘you’ve got a lot of balls’. You say someone’s an idiot by saying he’s un cretino. Or that he’s an ass by saying he’s uno culo. You tell them not to be an ass by saying non essere uno culo. Or not to be an asshole with non fare lo stronzo.”

I was doing my best to commit these to memory. I think she could see me struggling, because she opened a drawer in the little coffee table and took out several sheets of paper and a pencil. I nodded my thanks and scribbled as fast as I could.

“Ready? Okay. If you say Ma’ va te ne a fanculo, you’re telling someone to go fuck themselves. Or you can be more direct with vaffanculo which means ‘fuck you’. If you’re really angry at somebody you might say mafankulo}which means somebody who fucks their mother. Wait, you taught me this one, it’s ... oh, right, ‘motherfucker’.

“Okay, one of the first expletives you taught me. Shit. In Italian, it’s merda. A person who is a piece of shit is uno pezzo di merda. You could say to someone mangia merda, which means eat shit! If you are really angry you could say mangia merda e morte. That’s telling them to eat shit and die!

“If you want to call someone -- a man, not a woman -- a low, contemptible person you might tell them they’re figlio di puttana, a son of a whore. If someone has made an insulting suggestion or comment to you, you could tell them leccaculo, which is a different way to say kiss my rear end, no, wait ... kiss my ass!”

She wiped her sleeve across her forehead, apparently a little warm, while she twiddled the top button on her shirt.

“Okay, Carter. I think those are enough Italian expletives to get you started. Italian has lots of them. We are very creative in our insults, almost poetic. You will learn more in time.

“Maybe now we talk about the parts of the body in Italian. Just in case you meet a nice Italian girl.” She smirked at me.

She wiped the back of her hand across her lips and cleared her throat.

“Okay, there are lots of words for breasts in English, but in Italian it’s mostly tette. You can refer to a woman’s chest as il petto. The word is masculine even if you’re referring to a woman’s chest! See, even Italian is a little strange sometimes. The word for vagina is the same in Italian, just pronounced a bit differently. Sometimes we refer to it as micia, which is the feminine form for a small cat or kitten -- a pussy! A cruder word is fica, like in posso leccare il tua figa?, which means ‘can I lick your pussy?’

“But you know what’s very strange? Every region in Italy, sometimes even individual cities, have their own slang word for vagina! You will have to learn which ones they use when you visit a certain place in Italy. Micia}is pretty common and mostly understood everywhere.

“The slang word for ass is culo. You would tell someone to kiss your ass as bacha ma culo! Or tell somebody not to be an ass with non essere un culo. Or the word for anus -- stronzo for a man, stronza for a woman. You might say Non essere uno stronzo -- don’t be an asshole -- to somebody.

“When you finally do meet your Italian girlfriend, Carter, you can ask her to dammi un pompino. It means ‘give me a blowjob’. She may make this gesture to you.”

She flipped me off, but she was smiling. I smiled back at her. She was teasing me, but I teased her back by changing the channeled feather on her clit to a gentle tongue. I watched her catch her breath.

“If your girlfriend is sufficiently drunk she may ask you to cazzo la mia figa, which means ‘fuck my pussy’, or maybe scopare le mie tette -- ‘fuck my tits’. If you get her really drunk, she might say cazzo il mio culo. ‘Fuck my ass’. But you’d have to get her pretty drunk.”

She stopped and got a glazed look on her face for a moment, then shook her head and said, “Would you excuse me for a moment, Carter? I need to visit the bathroom.”

She walked off down the hall and as she left I linkcast a feeling of rising erotic sensitivity, like her skin was becoming electrically charged.

I reviewed some of the phrases she’d recited and corrected the spelling in a couple. I listened for the toilet flushing, but didn’t hear it. Eventually I heard her coming back down the hall. It looked like she’d washed her face. A few strands of her hair looked damp. She was making an effort to act normally.

“Okay, let’s continue. Where were we?”

“You were telling me how my drunk girlfriend would ask me to cazzo il mio culo.”

“Right. I think I said you’d need to get her pretty drunk. In the meantime, while you wait for the alcohol to take effect you could ask her succhia il mio cazzo. ‘Suck my dick.’ That would probably take less alcohol to get her in the mood.”

“Maybe it’s different in Italy. I never found that women needed that much alcohol to be open to those things. At least not in my experience.”

“I think most men would require it, even prefer it, because it takes less convincing, less effort, and they don’t have to talk to them after, because the woman passes out and probably doesn’t remember.”

“Not really my way. I like talking to women -- well, people in general -- and finding out who they are, what they like, what excites them, like that. I know most guys don’t do that, but they’re missing something, I think.”

“You would be the exception, I think, Carter. Men are mostly not like that.”

“I don’t disagree. But have I tried to ply you with alcohol? Have I made any suggestions about moving to someplace more comfortable, like your bedroom? Haven’t I spent the past couple of hours talking about language with you, learning some of yours, teaching you some of mine? Are those part of some very subtle secret plan to get you out of your clothes?”

She had to smile, because it was true. Nothing I’d done was part of some plot to get my dick into her. Provided you discounted the feeling of the tongue on her clit and the sensitivity of her skin which I’d channeled.

“Okay, Carter. You’re right. Maybe I’m just suspicious. I’m sorry about the ... Ooo, I hate when I can’t think of a word and it interrupts the flow. A suggestion which implies something bad or underhanded without actually saying it, it’s ... Oh! Insinuation! I’m sorry about the insinuation.”

“No need to apologize. I’m sure your observations are true in almost all cases. It would be entirely natural to assume that of me.”

“I should know better than to assume. People in school, including some of the professors, assumed that I was a poor student just because I was a woman. It took a couple of years before they changed their minds. We shouldn’t assume.”

She wiped her sleeve across her forehead again while she looked at me.

“So. You said in your experience that you never needed to use a lot of alcohol to get women to respond. How is it that you do it, then? Are you so different? What would you do if I were some girl you’d met at a party and you were attracted to me and you wanted to get me into bed? What would your first move be?”

“Well, I don’t know, it’s never the same. Mostly, I try to make a connection, see if we like each other, if we’re attracted, if there’s some intellectual connection, and I do that by talking, exchanging ideas, seeing how they respond. At some point I would make some physical contact, something simple like brushing a shoulder, or touching her hand. Like this.”

I reached over and just laid my hand on the back of hers for a few seconds. I saw her stiffen and shiver.

“If she didn’t pull away, I might increase the frequency of the light touching.” I reached over and placed my hand on her forearm, as if emphasizing a point.

“If I felt her moving in a little closer, I might suggest that we find someplace quieter where we didn’t have to shout at each other over the crowd noise. I might put my arm around her as we walked.” It was a bit awkward due to our positions on the couch, but I leaned over and put as much of my arm around her as I could.

“And after we’d talked a little more I might look in her eyes and try to determine if she might get upset by a kiss.” She was practically holding her breath now as she listened to me talk, so I looked her in the eye, then leaned in and kissed her gently, with one hand lightly on the side of her neck. I could feel her trembling.

It took about ten seconds, by my count, before she slapped a hand on the back of my head and started sucking my tongue. With my hand on her neck, just above her shoulder, I brushed her skin with a finger and heard her moan.

“Cristo!” she said, pulling her mouth away roughly. “Why am I so aroused? I am not ... wait, what is the word? I am not easy, making love has to mean something for me. I do not like to let boys pick me up and take me home, I have to know them first. Why do I... -- one of the other women in the English class taught us a phrase that we all laughed at -- why do I feel like jumping your bones?”

“How can I answer that question, Giulia? I don’t know why you are feeling whatever you’re feeling now. I just kissed you because you asked me how I would do if I were trying to get someone into bed. I understood that you wanted me to demonstrate. Was that not what you meant?”

“Yes, it was. I didn’t know that I would get me so eccitato.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No. I like sex. But, like I said just now, I want to develop some kind of relationship or understanding with someone before I go to bed with them. How long have I known you? Why do I feel like I want to rip your clothes off and kiss you all over?”

“Maybe it’s ... chemistry?”

She looked at me while she puzzled out the meaning, then barked a laugh.

“You make a joke. And not bad, either. Maybe it is. Right now, my body is sending out sparks. That’s what it feels like. My shirt rubs against my skin and I jump, it is so sensitive.”

“Tell me what you want, Giulia. Do you want me to leave so you can stand in a cold shower until the feeling goes away? I’ll do whatever you’re comfortable with. I don’t want you to be upset.”

She looked at me much as she would examine a chemical reaction in a flask, appraising it, analyzing it, looking for understanding. After a long moment, she pulled me in again for another kiss with lots of tongue.

“I will break my rule. Perhaps it is chemistry. Perhaps I am experiencing -- what is the word? -- experiencing withdrawal because it has been too long. I think I need to attend to this feeling so that I am not distracted from my studies. I do not know you well, Carter, but you seem like a nice boy. You were polite and interested in me and careful not to ... to ... shock me when we were talking about dirty words in English.

“But I think maybe this is ... Oh, what is the saying they use in the television advertisements for cars and appliances? I think this is a one-time offer. I do not have time for relationships now, I am too busy. So, a one-time offer. Do you want to accept the offer?”

“Guilia, if I turned down that offer it would probably be grounds for commitment to a mental hospital. I like being here, in the real world, so I accept. Happily.”

“Then let us begin. So, in your experience, as you were explaining earlier, what would you do for your next move for this imaginary woman you met at a party? Hypothetically.”

“Well, it’s probably easier to demonstrate than to explain. Let’s continue where we left off.” I got her in a lip lock again, my hand brushing her neck and moving lightly over her shoulder and onto her upper arm. I could feel her jump as I touched her, the suggestions still active. She put her other arm around my neck so I couldn’t get away.

I moved my lips from her mouth and worked my way down onto her neck, where I nibbled and kissed. Her body felt like it was vibrating, like she was ready to jump out of her skin, and her breathing was now quick and shallow. I reached up with my lips and tugged at her earlobe while I moved my hand over and squeezed her breast.

“Gesù Cristo! she gasped. She pushed into my hand, then dived back in to find my tongue with hers. I found her nipple through the fabric of her shirt and bra and pinched it between my thumb and forefinger. She groaned, then pushed me back far enough that she could start ripping at the buttons of my shirt.

She seemed to need this right now, so I let her work until they were all undone and I could slip it off my shoulders. She threw herself against my chest, kissing it everywhere, licking my nipples, making tiny little noises in her throat. After a couple of minutes, I took her shoulders and sat her upright, her mouth still open.

“You remember the phrase I taught you? ‘Turnabout is fair play.’ Lift your arms, Giulia. It took her a moment to understand, as if her English skills had suddenly failed her, then she lifted her arms straight up, her eyes never leaving mine.

I unfastened the two buttons below the collar, then pulled her shirt out of her waistband and lifted it up over her head. I dropped it on the couch. She wore a plain everyday bra, nothing fancy. She was a student, she wouldn’t have a lot of money for frilly things. It served its purpose, to shape her tits. She didn’t have a large chest. I’m not good at estimating bust size, maybe a B cup and I’d guess a 34 chest. But right now they looked gorgeous, and I leaned in and kissed the top of each. She put her hand on the back of my head and pulled me in.