Chapter 27

I know there's something I've forgotten before I explain why I'm on 23^rd Street telling this story. Shameful moments perhaps? Times I was cruel? Things I never should have done? That seems appropriate now. How about when I strung the blonde wife and the swarthy husband's daughter along? You may have forgotten her, but I never will. We grew up together. A beautiful girl, she had been my best friend until eclipsed by new friends not once but a few times. We knew each other before I had memory and early in my memories. Dark hair and brown eyes and tawny skin, otherwise she had her mom's delicate features. We watched each other grow, grabbed on when our only friends were each other. She grabbed harder. Once school began we both struggled with the separation. Mom would take me to see her because of her loneliness. Her smile lit a room when I arrived. I didn't understand her need. Mom and her parents remained best friends. They played bridge with the governess and we played with her many toys and games. Her parents catered to her loneliness by buying her too much. I wanted those toys in a fit of greed. She threw them at me. I took some and brought them home and stared at them with shame. She forgave me. I played with all my heart and she loved me for it. But Mom wanted me to befriend the elite. Our visits lessened. She missed me. I forgot her.

In summer we reunited. I wanted to play with my friends. She had hers too but she'd rather play with me. They came uptown and I introduced my friends and she got lost behind them. She had enough. Years later, after occasional encounters, when she got sexual and beautiful she told me she had been a foolish little girl obsessed with keeping me. We talked and walked and held hands and kissed. I had the tomboy and she had nobody. I brought her to my apartment and we got deeply into kissing. My mother came home and for the first and only time she got upset. She took hold of me and dragged me into her room. "You can't do this," she said. "You can't be with her. She needs to be with her school friends. She's always been delicate. You'll hurt her. You can't. Her parents are my best friends. They'll hate me."

"I've known her all my life," I said, confused.

"She'll latch on. She won't let go. She's too fragile. She's too close."

"I don't know, Mom. I like her. There's something about her that's me or something."

"See? She's like your sister. You wouldn't kiss your sister would you?"

"But it feels right."

"It's not!" yelled my mom and dragged me back into my room. "You should go," she said to the blonde wife's child. "I'm sorry, but unless you're just friends, you have to go."

The girl burst into tears. I wanted to hold her. Too delicate she could be crushed like a flower. I wanted to promise I wouldn't, but realized at that moment I would. The girl refused to budge. Mother left me with her and called her parents. I held her hand. I told her I had a girlfriend. I apologized.

"She'll never love you like I do," she said.

"What can we do?"

"I'll call you. We'll talk."

"You're so beautiful," I said. "Boys must be fawning over you."

"What do I care?" she said. "Someday you'll come to me. You'll kneel down and beg for my hand. We'll marry. It's destiny."

"Why do you say that?" I asked clumsily. "We're kids. Why would you stop your life for me? I don't understand."

"You don't understand love?" she asked. That's when I realized I didn't. I saw it surging in her eyes, in her face, in her body whatever it was. I liked the tomboy. It felt great fucking her and everything else about our relationship as well, but what the couple's daughter expressed reduced all feelings I ever felt to ash. She wanted me with her entire being like I'd become her skeleton and she would collapse into a puddle of flesh if we separated. It scared me. I didn't want the power. It made me ashamed. I didn't have her purity of emotion. I felt I never would. It made me feel poor, a mistress's son, a gigolo in training.

"What does it feel like?" I asked. She looked at me puzzled and then horrified. "I'm sorry. I don't understand."

"You have to!" she yelled.

"Then tell me," I said quietly. "Please."

She took a damp breath and said, "It can't be explained. Millions of words and no one's got it down."

"Try," I insisted.

"I dreamed of today over and over. Your hands, so delicate and fine hold mine like they belong to you, carefully, like a sparrow, but with your entirety touching me and meeting my entire being. Words you speak to me enter my heart. My heart speaks back and you capture it in yours. As easy as a seesaw rising and falling perfectly balanced as we talk back and forth. And then your lips touching mine, feeding my feelings with yours, letting me taste your desire and letting you taste mine. Feelings spin together like a tornado, pulling all senses into one giant whirl, completely one, sweeping everything else aside with unrestrained power, the most powerful energy in the world in a sweet kiss. How could it get stronger? And yet it does. As strong as the sun. No, two suns colliding, exploding but never spreading out. Always in, intertwining energy and heat and passion into one giant massive star, enmeshed too tightly to find where one sun and the other differ. That's what making love creates out of pure love. A complete and unbreakable bond no one can touch and everyone feels awed. But I don't care what they think. I care only about becoming one with you. I always have, though I only knew what that meant recently. My parents' bond has that magnitude."

I almost said her mom was a lesbian who needed to be coaxed into enjoying her father through another woman but thankfully didn't. And yet I knew what she meant. I knew how powerfully they loved each other. Maybe if I said something about sex not being what bonded her parents it would have been helpful. Probably not. She would have thought it mean and wouldn't believe me. But then maybe she'd shun me. Anyway, I bit my lip and kept silent.

"I can't," I said finally. "I don't know what I can say to make you see. I can't be your vision of me. I think you're beautiful. You're more a part of who I am than anyone except my mom. But you have to stop this. I can't give you what you want. I wish I could. Believe me I'd love to try. But I would hate to hurt you."

"Why do you then?" she sobbed.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"All your life, like I'm one of my parent's stupid pacifying toys they threw on me and nearly buried me, you let me bounce against you and then bounce away and perhaps bounce against you or perhaps you let hang stranded nowhere on your rubber band, not bothering with me anymore, a toy you toss in the junk pile like it's nothing, like it's never been anything, forgotten. You don't remember, do you? We were friends until you had others and you forgot me. Over and over again you did it, bouncing me against you and bouncing me away and then forgetting you even had me there. Sure you know me. That's how close we've been. You know me but it's so easy to forget me. Why?"

"Life. Life moves you from place to place, from person to person. Someone joins you and you think those moments last forever, but they never do, and not long after, that person who you had fun with can't even be conjured in your brain. What did she look like? Her image vanishes. Maybe something, some scary or especially fun event happened and it stays with you and you remember her but not her face. Why? I wish I knew. Life is a path, and along the path you pass things and they're behind you and new things appear and interest or intrigue or seduce, and then they're gone too."

"I guess that's true, but not with you," she said. "It's like you're always there, always near my path. Except I don't know how to bring you on mine. You're always farther than my reach. I thought I'd grabbed you and pulled you to me. I need to. My path feels empty without you."

"It's not though. You have friends. You have parents. You have places to go and discover new things. You have opportunities only you realize you can take because they're there in your path to be taken. If I'm out of reach, maybe it's meant to be. Maybe our paths parallel but never really converge."

"Look," she said, suddenly pulling herself together. "I'm acting crazy. Maybe we got so close kissing, and your mom got mad and tore you away and now she's got my mom coming to pick me up like I'm some child who can't get home alone and it made me a little crazy. I'll call you. We'll find a place to be together to figure this out, somewhere our parents can't interfere. Would you do that?"

I agreed. I even thought of where.

After school she met me in front of the Park Avenue apartment/studio of the fashion photographer on the day both of us and the photographer could meet. Being unusually beautiful with her mix of parents apparent, I thought she'd make an interesting model. We had tea with the photographer and his boyfriend and talked about current events, unparticular subjects attempting to relax the girl.

"What do you think about love," she asked in the midst of nothing much.

The photographer smiled at his lover, a beautiful man he had been with longer than usual. When he glanced back at the girl, he saw her seriousness. "When I was your age I hated love," he said. "I craved it and wasn't allowed it. I became a loner, mostly because my feelings and thoughts never seemed to jibe with my classmates. I knew how cruel they could be, so I kept alone with my secrets, drawing them as discretely as possible, always covering my drawings whenever anyone passed by. At the same time I thought I was being interesting, being creative and hoped someone would notice it. That became my fantasy. It never came to pass. I clung to it."

"When did you fall in love?" she asked.

"I thought I had," he said. "In my mind I had a lover, bits and pieces of those who ignored me, and I constructed him. But it wasn't love, because love is two. It was fantasy and self pleasure, do you understand? Like when I was alone in bed he would be there and I would pleasure myself."

"Oh my," said the shocked girl, and then she giggled.

"Finally out of school, graduated, I decided to take pictures of pretty girls like you. I'd been taking pictures since my mom got me a Brownie when I was five. I stopped girls in the park or on the street and asked if they'd let me shoot them. I felt brave with girls, no threats there and they sometimes agreed. I created a portfolio and went into a modeling agency and showed them. Only then did I meet people I could communicate with. And the men shared my interests, sexually and otherwise. And the first one I met I fell in love with, a cute boy working on hair for the models. Just because he talked to me and flirted with me, I thought I'd found love. Of course it ended badly. He flirted terribly and liked to play and not be serious, and I'm the opposite and opposites attracted only for a moment before he slipped out of my arms and into another's. I felt cruelly ostracized, but he simply acted normally as far as his character you know. I thought I learned but didn't. It kept happening. I finally woke up and decided to enjoy the moment rather than fight for a vision that didn't exist. Of course I immediately found my mate. We kept it light and fun and when it got serious we'd scrap and make up and laugh. It felt good."

"So you found love?" asked the girl.

"In a way. When we split it hurt a bit, but I bounced back pretty quick. But the love we had came from living together I think, accepting each other's ugly habits that no one else could see. Love came from time. The fact we wanted to stay together and never get uncomfortable about it. Not very romantic is it?"

"No," she said pouting.

"But that's the thing. It's like sex. No one really tells you the truth. You have to find it by yourself and struggle through the lies to get there. Love isn't a flash or a moment or the beginning of anything. Love is persistence. It's slow to develop. What the books and the movies say isn't real. When two people become attracted to each other, that's more about lust or need, the need for company or seduction or discovery, finding out how well you fit together, things like that. Love comes later if it comes at all. It's rare to have many people in your life you fall in love with. One or two at the most really, at least in terms of love being a connection you want to last a lifetime."

"But what about the strength of it?" she asked. "What about the power and the passion?"

"It's there, but often it comes with absence, when your love leaves or when you reunite. Excuse me a second dear," he said and nudged my arm, directing me to follow him.

We stood in the studio alone and unheard. "She's lovely, but I don't think it's a good idea," he said. "You've never been naked with her have you?" I shook my head. "She wants you to be, but not like this. She wants to be fired with passion, desperate for your touches. No, I don't think so."

"But that's the point," I said. "She's got this thing for me I could never reciprocate. I mean I've known her all my life. She's like a sister. But she wants more, much more. If she just wanted fun, you know, a chance to feel pleasure for the first time, I'd be all for it, because she's beautiful. But there's something wrong with her obsession. I thought if we got real, just two naked bodies posing, maybe reason would come."

"I bet if you played with my boyfriend, she'd wake up and realize she hasn't got a chance, and I'd enjoy it myself."

I knew he was joking, but he said it with such seriousness I had to respond. "You know that won't happen." I said.

"Too bad," he said. "Go in the changing room and get naked and throw on a robe. I'll bring out my boyfriend and start shooting him. She can watch when you join him and then I'll ask her to get naked. We'll see if it gets that far."

At first she acted nervous and giggly. Her eyes fought to avoid contact with naked penises. But as usual the photographer took his time, and she began getting interested in his work. She approached him and us and asked him to explain his art. He did, and let her look at the images through his viewfinder, telling her about angles of light and shadow, focus and lenses and shutter speed. Then he asked her to join us.

"Okay," she said and began stripping.

"You can go into the dressing room," said the amused photographer.

"That's okay," she said and hardly paused when she wore only a bra and panties, unfastening and rolling them off. Her body already showed development. Her taut breasts looked wide and full, showing potential for a substantial bust and her waist defined a gentle curve to her hips and her round little butt. Her pubic mound showed sparse growth, but the dark hair made it more obvious. Undeniably sexy, my penis responded. When the photographer had her back into it, I saw her blush, and her eyes took hold of mine like a cat her prey. I should have become wary, realizing the plan might be failing, but instead I got horny. Both of us let ourselves be directed by the photographer, but contact distracted, and the longer we posed, the more we teased, taking deep breaths to quiet our panting.

Finally over, the girl asked for a private room and guided me to it. As soon as the door closed we embraced still naked and kissed deeper than we'd gotten our first day. "Make love to me," she whispered in my ear, rubbing her tummy against my erection. I led her backwards to the edge of the bed where she sat and then moved up and lay before me. Her legs remained tight together and her arms hugged her sides, but her eyes pleaded. I began exploring her taut skin slowly from toes to inside of her upper thighs where she finally relaxed and opened. My hands slid across her torso until they met her breasts and gently caressed them while my mouth began working slowly on her vagina. Her sweet desire mixed with a tang of urine. She writhed and her pussy moved as she gasped her pleasure. I played dodge with her clitoris, waiting for greater heights before sending her over. Her quickening breath and widening thighs and her elevating her pussy revealed the moment, and I lapped her clitoris like a cat its water and she crested loudly and toppled, catching her breath.

"Come here," she said. I crawled beside her and she draped her body over mine, squeezing her pussy against my hip and she tasted her fluids while we tangled tongues.

"Are you..." she began and reached down to touch my raging penis.

"I haven't any protection," I said.

"I want to," she complained.

"We can do other things," I suggested.

"I want to," she repeated, squeezing my glans hard.

"Easy," I said, easing her hand off my penis with my hand.