Chapter 2

The junk food actually helped. His glucose level was high when she urged him to take longer steps on the way back to the house. At one point she linked her elbow through his and tried to get him to match her stride. Her soft breast rubbed against his arm and distracted him from the discomfort and, to his surprise, he found himself with a stride that made him feel younger. He was sweaty, breathing hard, and his hips ached when they got home. Oddly, getting up the steps went well, possibly because that involved muscles he hadn’t used while walking. Still, he shuffled again as soon as they got in the house. When he complained his muscles hurt Mai Li told him to take a shower and she’d work on his hips.

In the shower Bobby stood under the pounding water, leaning against the wall on both arms. He was thinking about Mai Li “working on his hips” and how he might get hard again if she touched him like she had, before. He was mildly astonished when he looked down and saw he was already hard. Bobby had been awake for six months, at that point. He’d had an erection, now and then, but they had all been piss hardons, like morning wood. He’d never felt like jerking off when he’d had one. When he got home and watched TV he got a couple more, but to be honest, he hadn’t felt the urge to deal with his erections in that way. He just wasn’t ... interested enough.

Now, though, as he thought back to the dozens of times he’d stared at the deep crevice between Mai Li’s breasts, he was ... interested.

It felt odd to reach and grip his prong. At the same time it felt normal, like riding a bike again after years of walking. His muscles remembered what to do and he stroked faster and faster. He closed his eyes and imagined Mai Li getting ready that morning, before she put on that halter top. He imagined her naked breasts, and nipples on those breasts. He was right on the verge of cumming, breathing hard, when the seizure hit him.

It was a grand mal seizure and it robbed him of all control over his body. When the tonic phase hit him he went rigid and lost his balance, leaning sideways. His shoulder hit the glass door and it slammed open, crashing against the wall. Only because it was tempered glass, did it not break. His head glanced off the plastic clothes hamper, which skittered into the commode and fell over. His shoulder hit the floor with a thump.

Mai Li just happened to be walking by the bathroom door, on her way to her room, when she heard the door slam into the wall and the other sounds associated with his fall. She went to the door and tapped.

“Bobby?”

Nothing.

She only asked one more time, a little louder, before she violated his privacy to make sure he was okay. He was in the clonic phase of his seizure when she saw his wet, naked body lying half in and half out of the shower. He was jerking and his head was hitting the bottom of the hamper, so she hurried to pull him away from anything that could endanger him. The easiest way to protect him was to sit down and pull him onto her lap, holding his head against her upper torso as the tremors wracked his body.

“It’s okay,” she said, soothingly, stroking his wet hair. “It’s okay, Bobby. I’m right here.”

Her eyes did a quite normal scan of his body, looking for signs of injury. It could be argued that it was inevitable that she see his penis. It was still quite firm and it looked entirely different than any penis she’d ever seen before, at least in real life. The organs of the men she’d had sex with had all been circumcised. This one was not. She hadn’t really gotten a good look at any of the ones that had gone in her until Raul, in college. His had been very pink, very bent, and slim, compared to the one she was looking at now, as she cradled Bobby’s head. Bobby’s was very white, and very straight, with a uniform thickness along its length. She knew, academically, that the tip was covered with a foreskin, which looked both interesting and a little gross. It didn’t look like a penis, exactly, but she knew it was. It was both thicker and longer than Raul’s, but it didn’t look scary or anything. It just looked odd.

Before she could reflect on his manhood further, he began to come around. His state of mind was what looked like sleepiness to someone who had never had a seizure and it took, him quite a while to come to his senses. He woke with his nose firmly buried in the cleavage he’d stared at so often that day, though he wasn’t aware of that immediately. It took him maybe sixty seconds of rubbing his face against her breasts, while she cooed at him that he was fine, and it was over, before his mental faculties fully returned. His concentration, once he did realize where his nose was, centered on that fact, and only when he began to recognize where they were did he also realize he was naked.

“Shit!” he groaned. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said, still stroking his hair. “You had a seizure while you were in the shower. I heard you fall. You were thrashing around and the easiest way to protect you was to hold you like this. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

Reluctantly he found the floor with his hand and pushed away, lifting his face away from her chest. He looked down and saw his bone and, groaning, covered it with his free hand.

“I’m sorry,” he moaned again.

“Bobby!” Her voice was too loud and he winced. “Stop apologizing for being normal.”

“I’m not normal,” he said, also too loudly. “I have seizures and I can’t control myself!”

She helped him get off of her and then stood to help him up.

“Look,” she said. “Your seizures can be controlled with meds and some meditation training. We need to know what triggers your seizures. Let’s worry about that, first.”

“I know what caused this one,” he muttered.

“What was it?”

“I can’t tell you,” he groaned.

“You have to tell me,” she ordered, sternly.

“Jeez, Mai Li,” he complained.

“Bobby, I need to know these things. Please, just tell me.”

“Do you promise not to hate me?”

“Of course,” she said, trying to control her impatience.

“I was ... um ... washing myself down there ... a lot,” he said in almost a whisper.

“Is that what caused that seizure? That’s interesting,” she said, unfazed.

“Well ... yeah. At least I think so.”

“So that’s what you were doing in the shower?”

“I already said that, didn’t I?”

“Okay. Okay. Maybe when you get excited like that, it triggers a seizure. That’s good to know.”

“Why is that good to know?”

“Well, you can avoid having a seizure if you know what triggers it. You just avoid the trigger.”

“I’ll go crazy if I have to stop ... stay away from ... I mean if I can’t...” He trailed off, unable to speak the word “masturbate”.

Mai Li understood his unstated conflict. She knew what to do about seizures. She did not know what to do about his libido.

“We can worry about that later. Right now you need to rest and relax. We don’t want you to have another seizure.”

“I have to worry about it now,” he moaned. “I know it’s going to happen again. I’m sorry, but it just happens!”

Again Mai Li understood what he was referring to. He got erections because of her, or how he thought about her. That part didn’t bother her all that much. She knew lots of guys had gotten erections around her.

“You don’t have to be sorry, Bobby. You’re right. That stuff just happens. It’s not good to worry and fret over it.”

“I don’t get it,” he said. “How can you not be freaked out?”

Mai Li had a small epiphany at that point, primarily because there was a whining tenor to his voice that made him sound younger than he looked. The epiphany was that he was younger than he looked. Mentally, Bobby was still fifteen. Emotionally he was fifteen, as well. His development had been suspended by the coma and his unusual circumstances. Physically, his body might be three years older, but sexually he was still just a clueless teenager who didn’t understand the hormones raging through his body.

“I’m older than you and I wasn’t in a coma for three years,” she said. “I know what happens when some guys look at me, or think about me ... that way. I guess I just got used to it over time.”

“I don’t know what to do,” he moaned.

“Let me think about it,” she said. “Maybe there’s a solution we haven’t thought of, yet.”

“I don’t think so,” he sighed. “The only way to solve my ... problem ... is to do what I was doing in the shower and we know how that ended.”

“Like I said, let me think about it. Now, you’re still naked. And wet!” She reached for a towel on the bar and handed it to him. “You go get dressed and then relax for a while.”

He took two unsteady steps while running the towel across his body and she changed her mind.

“Wait. I’m worried you’ll fall or have another seizure. I’m going with you but I won’t watch while you get dressed, okay?”

“Do I have a choice?” he asked, sullenly. “You’ve already seen me like this. It’s not like you can pretend you never saw me wet and naked on the bathroom floor.”

“Look,” she said. “I had a choice, a few moments ago. When I realized what had happened, I could have called 911 and had them come deal with you. But I decided I could help you faster so I did that. Would it have made you feel better if two complete strangers had seen you wet and naked on the bathroom floor?”

“The seizure would have been over by the time they got here,” he argued.

“So you’d rather I just wait outside the door while you thrash around and split your head open?” Her voice was heavy with sarcasm.

“I don’t know what I’d rather,” he grumbled.

She poked him with a short, but sharp, fingernail.

“Move, Buster,” she ordered. “You need to get dressed.”

She followed him to his room, watching his skinny, pale butt as he moved the ten feet between the bathroom door and the door to his room. She left the bedroom door open and leaned against the jamb, breaking her promise not to watch him as he dressed. Whether it was a natural process or the result of embarrassment, his erection had wilted by the time she saw him pull up his shorts and cinch them around his waist with a belt. If he saw her watching him, he gave no notice, and within five minutes of leaving the bathroom he was clothed. He put on leather moccasins and turned to face her.

“I don’t want to lie down. If I do that I’ll just think about everything. Can we do something to take my mind off of all this?”

She looked at her watch. It was three P.M.

“Let’s go for a ride,” she said.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Show me around town. You’ve lived here all your life, right?”

“Yeah.” His voice sounded neutral, but neutral was better than grumbly, so she took it.

“So show me around. I’m going to be living here for the next year or so and I need to know where things are.”

“Okay.”

Her car was an eight-year-old Subaru Forester that looked rough but wasn’t high-mileage. The previous owner had gotten in a fender bender and had apparently used any insurance payout for things other than repairing the damage. She’d bought it because she didn’t care about the dents and scrapes and it had room for her to put her things in when she moved. The passenger door creaked when he got in and he had to slam it twice to get it closed and latched. When they pulled away from the house she drove aimlessly, waiting for him to tell her where to go. That didn’t happen until she ended up on a dead-end road and had to turn around.

“I don’t know where to go,” she pointed out, gently. “Where’s your old school?”

“Go that way,” he finally said, pointing to the left.

The high school he’d attended for six months before the accident was situated between the KU campus and the campus of the Haskell Indian Nations University, so they spent almost an hour in that part of town while she got him to tell her what he knew about both universities. Slowly his mood lightened and they began to have a normal conversation. He directed her to highway 59 and showed her the shopping area in south Lawrence, where the Walmart and big box stores were. When she saw a park with swings, she pulled into the parking lot and turned the car off.

“What are we doing here?” he asked.

“Swinging,” she said. “You were too tired yesterday. Today you’re not.” She grinned.

He looked skeptical, but got out and followed her to a long swing set made of thick pipe that had six swings hanging from it. She sat in one and kicked off, swinging four or five feet while she reached up and gripped the chains. Bobby just watched as she waited, slowly swinging back and forth. Eventually he sat on the swing next to her, but didn’t make it move.

“Can I ask you some personal questions?” she queried, suddenly.

“About what?”

“I’ll just ask them and if you don’t want to answer, that’s fine. I’d like to figure out where you were on a social level before the accident.”

“What do you mean, social level?” he asked.

“Did you have a girlfriend?”

“No. I wasn’t allowed to date.”

“Okay, but was there a girl at school who you wished could be your girlfriend?”

“Not really. I mean there were cute girls and I even talked to some of them, but that was all.”

“So you’re a virgin,” she said.

“You can’t ask somebody something like that!” he yelped.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m sorry. That was too personal. I’m just trying to figure out what you thought of back then when you ... um ... did what you were doing in the shower.”

“Oh man,” he moaned.

“Never mind,” she said, kicking off and swinging. “We don’t have to talk about this.”

“This is crazy,” he said. “People don’t talk about this kind of stuff.”

“All I’m trying to do is help,” she said. “Like I said, never mind. Now, swing. It will be good for your muscles.”

His foot dug in and he moved the swing ten inches. His initial outrage that she’d ask him such a personal question was replaced by curiosity.

“So... why did you want to know ... um ... that?”

Mai Li didn’t know what to do. She had backed off because he was clearly uncomfortable talking about the issue. Now, though, he was extending the conversation.

“I’m not a guy,” she said, “so I don’t know how guys think. I know how they act, and I know what’s on their mind, but I don’t know what they’re thinking while they do what you were doing, you know? I think whatever it was, it made you too excited and I think that’s what triggered the seizure. I don’t know if there’s anything we could do to help you be less excited, maybe? I mean, I know girls do that in different ways, depending on how they feel. Sometimes it’s really exciting and sometimes less so. Maybe you could do it with less excitement or something.”

He had swung maybe two feet, back and forth, but now he stopped and stared at her.

“I can’t believe you said that,” he said.

“What part?”

“The part about girls doing it!” he blurted.

“Everybody does it, Bobby,” she said. “It’s normal. It’s just biology, mixed with what’s going on in your brain.”

Again, his curiosity drove things forward.

“So what did you mean, that they do it in different ways? I only know one way to do it,” he said.

“Well, that’s going to get pretty personal,” she said. “I thought you were embarrassed to talk about this.”

“I can’t believe we’re talking about this at all,” he replied.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” she said. “Like I said, I’m just trying to help.”

“Things sure have changed since my accident,” he sighed. “Nobody talked about this stuff back then.” He blinked. “Well, some of the guys did, but only around other guys.”

“You were younger back then. And you still think like you are fifteen. But you’re not fifteen anymore. You’re an adult, and adults can talk about all kinds of things kids don’t, or won’t, or can’t, or whatever.”

“It’s still weird,” he said.

“Let’s get some exercise,” she said. “If you want to, we can continue the discussion later. Right now I want you to work your muscles and swinging is a nice, easy way to do that.”

They swung for fifteen minutes, during which Mai Li enforced silence. She didn’t worry about how high he went, as long as he leaned and stretched his legs in the way required to make a swing work. She went higher than him in an unspoken challenge, but he didn’t take the bait. Still, he was working so she was satisfied.

Bobby, though, was like a dog with a bone. He was still amazed at this new world he found himself in. She had said he was an adult, but he didn’t feel like an adult. And yet, she spoke with him on an adult level; a very adult level. She had said she was trying to help him, but he had no idea how that could happen. The boner he’d gotten had been because of her. In one sense she had caused his seizure. The obvious answer was for her to go away, out of sight and out of mind. He didn’t want that, though. In fact, that was the last thing he wanted. It was confusing. It was that confusion that prodded him to move things forward on the conversation that had paused. He waited until they were in the car, headed back home.

“Okay, so how, exactly, do you think you could help me?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered, simply. “All I was doing was trying to gather information to better understand your emotional situation.”

“I didn’t know I had an emotional situation,” he replied.

“Everybody has an emotional situation,” she said. “In your case, it’s what was going through your mind in the shower.”

“Oh.” Bobby felt like that didn’t help at all.

“Let me ask you this. How many times have you gotten excited like that since your accident?”

“I don’t think I ever did,” he said. “Except for today.”

Mai Li decided not to remind him of the erections he’d gotten while she worked with him.

“Didn’t they give you sponge baths?” Her implication was that, during such sponge baths, his organ would have been manipulated and might have reacted to that.

“Yes, but none of them looked like you.”

“Ahhh,” she said. “Now we get to the meat of the matter. How, exactly, do I look?”

He was silent for long enough she thought he wasn’t going to answer.

“I don’t want you to get mad at me,” he finally said.

“Why would I get mad? I asked you to tell me, so I can’t get angry if you answer me with the truth, right?”

“Okay, you’re sexy. There. Are you upset because I think you’re sexy?”

“No,” she said, calmly. “I don’t agree with you, but it doesn’t bother me that you think that.”

“I stare at your boobs all the time,” he confessed.

“I know. I see you doing it.”

“And that doesn’t make you mad?”

“Guys look at women’s boobs,” she said. “And at their asses and legs and all that. It’s normal. It can be rude if they do it too obviously, but I’m not one of those women who yell that men shouldn’t look at women or think about women as sexual beings. Mother Nature made men to be that way. It’s not their fault. Sure, I think a guy should be polite about it, but he can’t just turn off that impulse. Just like he can’t turn off the process that makes his penis get hard. What controls that is so deep in a man’s psyche that it’s untouchable by his conscious processes.”

“You’re very strange,” sighed Bobby.

“I’m not strange at all,” she argued. “I’m as normal as the day is long. That’s the whole point. We’re both normal. Yes, you have some challenges to overcome, but there’s no reason in the world we can’t be comfortable around each other like normal people are comfortable around each other.”

“So if I get another boner it won’t bother you?” His sarcasm was less virulent, but was still there. It was the source of that sarcasm that allowed him to name his condition out loud.

“Actually,” she said, looking around like a spy afraid of being caught. Her voice was lowered and she leaned toward him. “You have a pretty impressive one. I shouldn’t admire it, but I have to say I’m impressed.”

She leaned back as if what she’d said was more akin to, “I can live with it. I won’t tell anybody if you don’t.”

“I can’t believe you said that,” he gasped.

“Why? It’s just the truth,” she said. “I’ve only seen a few, but you have nothing to be ashamed of. Not at all. I’d even say it was handsome.”

“I can’t believe you said that, either,” he blurted.

“We have all day for you to believe or disbelieve what I say. Right now I have a yen for ice cream. Guide me to somewhere that has ice cream.”

They were sitting in the car, parked in the lot of the Cold Stone Creamery. He’d ordered a shake and she was nipping at the top scoop of a double. He watched her lips as they teased the pink ice cream and was unable to stop himself from thinking about what else those lips might have nipped at. No girl had ever done that to him, of course, but the claims of other guys he knew and his imagination supplied details anyway. She glanced at him with her Asian eyes occasionally and he wondered if she could tell what was going through his mind.

“I’ve never met anyone like you,” he said, just to break the silence.

“There weren’t any Asian girls in your school?”

“There was one, but I never talked to her,” he answered.

“What was her name?”

“I don’t even know,” he sighed.

“Well, she was probably a lot like me,” said Mai Li. “Most girls are quite similar.”

“I doubt that,” he said.

“We are!” she insisted. “We all worry about the same stuff, and have similar dreams and challenges in life. People are pretty much alike, in my opinion.”

“I never met a girl who would talk about the stuff we’ve been talking about,” he argued.

“Okay, I admit that most girls wouldn’t bring up your erections in casual conversation,” she said, “but our circumstances are different. It’s important that this ‘stuff’, as you call it, doesn’t inhibit our plan to get you better. That’s the only reason I brought it up. I don’t want it to get in the way of our work.”

“I understand that part,” he said. “I’m just not used to things being that ... open. I mean my own mother wouldn’t talk to me about ... that.”

“How do you know? Have you ever asked her?”

“Right,” he groaned. “I can just see me going to her and saying, ‘Hey, Mom. I get these boners and I don’t know what to do about them.’ That would go over like a lead balloon.”

“Well, if you said it like that it might not go well,” said Mai Li. “But if you approached it a little less confrontationally she might be happy to advise you. In my experience mothers are very interested in their children’s welfare and concerns. It might be uncomfortable, but I bet she’d talk about it with you.”

“I think I’ll just leave things like they are,” he said.

“Good. That’s progress.”

“How, exactly is that progress?”

“It’s progress because it means things are cool between us. That’s important because we’re going to be working together closely for a long time.”

“So do you really think I could ... um ... do it in a way that didn’t cause a seizure?”

“Again, I have no idea, but we can think about it and who knows, maybe it can be done differently.”

“Like you said girls do it differently,” he said.

“Yes. Girls get horny, too. Like I said, I don’t know how guys think, but I have noticed that they seem to either be on or off. What I mean is they’re either ready to go, so to speak, or they’re not. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” he said. His own experience was like that.

“Okay, with girls it’s a little different. We can be horny on a scale, let’s say from one to five. We’ll say a guy has just one and two. Our five is like a guy’s two. But we also have two through four. If there’s no guy involved and we want to do something about being horny, then it can be kind of lazy, just feeling good, or we can work harder to ... um ... you know ... get off.”

“Wow,” sighed Bobby. “I can’t believe we’re talking like this. This really is crazy.”

“You wanted to know, right? All I did was tell you what you wanted to know. I hope you can have more of a one to five scale, like girls do, because if you do, maybe we can handle those urges with less excitement and avoid what happened in the shower.”

“I thought all you were here to do was physical therapy,” sighed Bobby.

Again, she leaned toward him and looked around as if she wanted to make sure no one could hear her comments.

“Maybe masturbation is part of your physical therapy,” she whispered.

“Good grief,” he groaned again.

“Let’s go back home and see if the GED people have sent us an email,” she said, brightly.

“Why does it seem like I might still be in a coma and all this is some weird dream?” he sighed.

“Did you dream while you were in that coma?” asked Mai Li. They were sitting at the kitchen table, where Mai Li’s laptop was open. She was checking Bobby’s new email account that they’d set up during the GED enrollment process.

“I don’t remember that,” he said.

“I’ve heard that people in a coma can hear voices,” she commented.

“I think I remember my Mom’s voice, but not what she said,” he replied. “When I woke up everything was jangly and I couldn’t remember anything at all for a while. I knew who I was and I knew who Mom was, but everything else was just a fog.”

“It must have been tough,” said Mai Li, sympathetically.

“Yeah. It’s better now. I mean I can remember stuff now. But it was hard for a long time.”

“Well, it doesn’t have to be hard anymore,” she said.

“That’s easy for you to say,” he groused. “You don’t have the problems I do.”

“That’s true,” she admitted.

“What do you do when you get horny?” he asked. He blinked. He was astonished that he’d asked something so personal. “Sorry,” he said.

Mai Li was taken aback, but not for long.

“Well, since we’ve agreed we’re both adults and can talk about this kind of thing ... I do what you do.” She frowned. “Or what I think you do. What most guys do.”

“You said girls do it differently,” he said, “and pardon me, but we’re not exactly built the same.” In his limited experience, he’d never given any thought to how a girl might masturbate.

“Obviously,” she said. “What a woman rubs is smaller, but it’s basically the same thing.”

“I can not believe we’re talking about his,” he groaned.

“You’re the one who asked,” she said.

“I didn’t mean to ask that,” he said. “It just came out. I think I’m frustrated right now.”

“Frustration creates energy,” she said. “Want to work out?”

“No,” he said. “We just worked out on the swings.”

“Come on. Don’t be that way. You know we have to do your physical therapy.”

“What I know is that it will probably happen again and that will make me even more frustrated!” he yipped.

“If you dwell on it then yes, you’ll get frustrated. But surely that’s not all you think about. What we need to work on is thinking about other things.”

“I don’t think you understand,” said Bobby. “If you’re there, if I see you, it’s going to happen again!”

“Right,” she said. “Hmmm. I wonder if we should ask the doctor about this.”

“We’re not going to go tell some doctor that I have a seizure whenever I try to beat off!” he yelped.

“There has to be a solution,” she said. “Maybe a change to your meds?”

“Again, I do not want to ask the doctor to change my meds just so I can whack off,” he groaned, “or so I’m so zoned out I can’t function.”

“We need more information,” she said. “We’ll need to do some experimentation.”

“Experimentation? What does that mean?”

“Let’s go through some therapy while I think about this,” she said. “Stretches first and then we’re going to do some strength work.”

“You’re hard to like sometimes,” he groaned.

“I’m not here for you to like me,” she said with a grin.

Two hours had passed, during which Bobby felt like every muscle in his body had been strained and stressed beyond what nature allowed. He felt pain, which Mai Li said was caused by the buildup of lactic acid in his muscles.

“You need to keep moving those muscles to work that acid out of them,” she said, after she’d put away the colored rubber strips that had done the straining.

“I can’t move anything,” he groaned. “You’re killing me.”

“For a dead guy you look pretty good,” she teased. “I wish we had a therapy pool. That’s the best way to get rid of lactic acid. We don’t though, so I can massage the muscles and it will work the acid out that way.”

“If you do, you know what will happen,” he said.

“Okay. So it happens. We need to figure out a solution to that problem anyway, right? If it happens we can experiment.”

“We can experiment?” he said again.

“Maybe I can advise you,” she said. “That’s all I meant.”

“So now you’re an expert on that?”

“Let’s just say I’m familiar with the process,” she said. “I might be able to help.” She blinked. “Advise,” she amended.

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The Asian Blues - Version Bravo

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