Scarlet Letters: The Arb

<body background="graphics/background.gif" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#990000" vlink="#666666" alink="#FFFFFF"> <p><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="724"> <tr> <td width="488"><font face="Georgia" size="2"><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="2" width="468"> <tr> <td align="LEFT" width="1" rowspan="33" valign="BOTTOM"><font face="Georgia" size="2" color="#CCCCCC">..</font></td> <td align="CENTER" valign="MIDDLE"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="440"> <tr> <td align="CENTER" valign="TOP"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="LEFT"><b><font face="Georgia">The Arb</font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="RIGHT"><b><font face="Georgia"><a href="bios_m2z.shtml#Urfe">Nicholas Urfé</a></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="CENTER"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="LEFT" valign="TOP"><font face="Georgia" size="2">Im neck-deep in trying to figure out how to squeeze Mircea Eliade and the intersection of the sacred and the profane into three pages double-spaced when the phone rings, so of course I leap to answer it.<br> <br> "Hey," says Jamie.<br> <br> "Hey."<br> <br> "I, uh, got some really good stuff. You know? From Chris."<br> <br> "Yeah," I say.<br> <br> "And Evas here," she says, but Ive already heard her laughing in the background. Sounds like theyre listening to Tom Waits.<br> <br> "Ill be there. Give me fifteen minutes or so."<br> <br> "Kay," says Jamie.<br> <br> "Whats up," says John as I grab my jacket, my favorite four-button black-and-green check jacket.<br> <br> "Jamies got some good pot."<br> <br> "You hate pot," says John.<br> <br> "Yup," I say, headed for the door.<br> <br> <br> Im wrong. Its not pot, its hash. Jamie pinches off a little chunk of it, brown and glistening with oil like a crumb of really intense granola, and puts it on a saucer stolen from Dining Services. She sets it smoldering with a match, then drops a big glass bell jar over it. The thick white smoke curls up inside. Evas shaved her hair back down to virulent yellow fuzz again, which makes her face look harsh and delicate all at once. Her eyes are swimming blue behind thick black-rimmed glasses. Shes lounging on Jamies bed in anonymous grey underwear and a grubby white V-neck T-shirt that says "Queen Dick," and I dont ask where her pants are. Jamie at least is dressed, in baggy jeans and a flannel shirt buttoned up enough to mostly hide her bra.<br> <br> "Go on," she says, putting her hand at the top of the bell jar, and I stoop down so when she tilts it up I can suck the smoke billowing into my lungs. Whoa. Shit. Im dizzy. I sit down heavily in Jamies desk chair. I dont think I like hash much, either.<br> <br> Eva giggles. Its Jethro Tull playing now, the mouse police, you know, never sleeps. Never sleeps. Now Jamies giggling, breaking off another pinch.<br> <br> "I never said I wasnt a cheap date." For some reason it seems important to point this out.<br> <br> "More for us," drawls Eva. Jamie, having set up another chunk, flops back onto the bed to watch the smoke, thick and white, trapped and raging under the glass. Eva strokes her thigh. Im not jealous. Im not. I mean, Jamies my girlfriend and all, but Im not the jealous type, you know?<br> <br> The mouse police never sleeps.<br> <br> "Hey," says Eva, after sucking in another lungful of smoke. She blinks, thickly. "Hey. Lets go for a walk."<br> </font></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="CENTER"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="LEFT" valign="TOP"><font face="Georgia" size="2">Back in January, its two in the morning, were walking back the three of us from a New Years party at the Ministry of Truth. It was warmer than usual -- there was one of those amazing fogs thats just thick enough to be beautiful, trees looming out of it in new and fantastic shapes, all the streetlamps ringed by perfect circles of colored light. But Jamie was chilly nonetheless and Eva was feeling butch so it was Jamie twirling in Evas leather jacket, buckles jingling, the cuffs swallowing Jamies hands. Eva looked cold in her sleeveless T-shirt. Gooseflesh pricked her upper arms, the Celtic knotwork tattoo ringing one of them, a vaccine scar pocking the other.<br> <br> Jamie stops twirling and dances up close to Eva. "You look cold," she says. And Eva shakes her head and starts to say, "No, Im not," I think, but she stops suddenly and instead says, "Oh, fuck it," and kisses Jamie, and Jamie, arms outstretched in that leather jacket too big for her, is too surprised to do anything but kiss her back.<br> <br> I looked away.<br> <br> The thing that happened next, though -- there was a crunch of gravel, a footstep, and then Evas kissing me.<br> <br> See, <i>thats</i> what practically knocked me on my ass.<br> </font></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="CENTER"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td><font face="Georgia" size="2">May, and Evas buttoning on, Christ, a skirt, though its more of a kilt, really, pleated, but in a weird plaid, yellow and red and orange on black, that I dont think any Scot would ever claim. She throws on a ratty black cardigan. Jamie pulls on some muddy hiking boots. "Where we going?" I ask.<br> <br> "The <i>Arb,"</i> says Eva, as if this is self-evident.<br> <br> I look at my thrift-store wingtips and sigh.</font></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="CENTER"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td><font face="Georgia" size="2">The Arboretum: its, I dunno, fifteen? Twenty? How the fuck big <i>is</i> an acre, anyway? Its a considerable chunk of the northeastern corner of the campus, laid out half-wild more through neglect than design. There are thick stands of trees mostly free of undergrowth, some open fields, a creek, and the towns two reservoirs, square lakes side by side, held back by tall earthen ramparts. Given that three thousand liberal arts undergraduates hang out hereabouts, going slowly mad as they study literature and music theory and political science and the weird cyclic history of Yeats and Mircea Eliade and his sacred and his fucking profane, and all of them wrapped up in the soap opera hothouse of college sex, well -- theres a lot of weird shit thats supposed to have happened here. Its one of Those Places, you know. Theres the big house on the hill there, thats one of the tonier dorms now; supposedly, the stables were down there, at the edge of the Arb, and they burned down one night and now the ghosts of the horses roasted alive are supposed to go galloping through the Arb with the full moon. Or maybe its the new moon. You cant hear jets flying overhead, they say, or the cars on the highway just past that stand of trees, and no one knows who owns the creepy dogs that seem to bark at any time of day or night from nowhere in particular. My first acid trip, I came here and heard the trees calling my name and danced with weird lights in the middle of one of the fields, and a friend swears he woke up in the middle of the night and came out here for no good reason he could name to find a bonfire, in that clearing down there, with no one around to have built it, and he sat and watched it burn itself down until morning. But he drinks a lot. Witches Sabbats, secret trysts, handfasting ceremonies, stupid jock pranks, open-air Shakespeare, drugged-out cliques desperate to escape overdue papers and looming exams -- the Arb has seen it all.<br> <br> Eva is the Residential Advisor for my floor, and back in the fall semester we used to go for long walks here, me bitching about classes and being homesick and not being able to deal with my high school girlfriend two states away, and her doing the mm-hmm and yeah and I understand thing that good RAs are supposed to do. Her hair was a little longer then, long enough to coil into a little Kewpie curl at the top of her forehead, but it was just as yellow and her glasses were as thick and heavy and her T-shirts as grubby and cryptic (a black one, I remember, with an Indian on horseback printed in red, holding up a compound bow), her jeans as ragged and holey, her big black boots kicking up drifts of dead leaves. I was head over heels in crush. It was on one of those walks that I made my grand pronouncement: my decision: I would, I said, call Christine, and tell her this wasnt working. Not two states apart. I sighed, and felt, physically <i>felt</i> some provident angel swoop down and lift this heavy pack off my back, straighten my shoulders, pat my ass, whisper you <i>go</i> in my ear.<br> <br> "You have to do what you have to do," said Eva, slumping down on a log. "I mean, if youre not happy -- you cant stay in something like this out of some sense of obligation, you know? Its not fair to you, but its also not fair to her. Not at all."<br> <br> She was so -- wise, you know? And so powerful. And beautiful. I sat down on the log next to her, looked at the late afternoon light gilding the edges of her face, touching her hair to a slow smoldering burn, glinting off those glasses, her lips, pale, uncolored, parted just so. <br> <br> "You know," she said, without really looking over at me, "that Im gay. Right?"<br> <br> "Well," I said. "I mean, yeah," I said. "Duh."</font></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="CENTER" valign="TOP"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="LEFT" valign="TOP"><font face="Georgia" size="2">So the sun is setting and there we are, the three of us, hand in hand at the gate to the Arb off the highway. A semi judders past, and Jamie squeezes my hand, and Im still light-headed from the hash. I cant think on the stuff, you know? See, I start this thought, any thought, and I get maybe halfway through it, and I lose track of what I was thinking, so I figure maybe if I follow my train of thought back, Ill figure out what it was, and so I start to do that, and get maybe halfway through, and lose track, and...?<br> <br> Which is maybe why Im not asking any of the questions I ought to be asking, like, what are we all doing here, now, why is Eva on the other side of me, squeezing my other hand like nothings happened, and why are we walking into the Arb when we all know, yes we do, whats going to happen?<br> <br> Which might very well be the reason why I smoked the hash in the first place.</font></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="CENTER" valign="TOP"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="LEFT" valign="TOP"><font face="Georgia" size="2">After that confused New Years Eve, or rather New Years morning, sloppy half-drunk kisses and chilly flesh tumbling over Jamies narrow dorm-room bed, tits and lips and hands and cock and skin and legs and mouths and cunts and no one ever really quite sure who was doing what to whom -- after that, Jamie wanted to buy Eva a Christmas present.<br> <br> "Its a little late for that," I said.<br> <br> "So itll be an Epiphany present," she said. "Thats not till January sixth. You know, the day the wise men actually showed up and gave him frankincense and myrrh and all that shit. Thats why theres <i>twelve</i> days of Christmas, you know."<br> <br> I knew, but I let her tell me anyway.<br> <br> So we hop a ride on the shuttle bus to the only mall worth the name in a thirty-mile radius, and youve got to understand?I can be really slow, sometimes. I didnt figure it out till she pulled me to a stop outside the Victorias Secret outlet.<br> <br> "Oh, geeze," I said.<br> <br> "You deserve it," said Jamie. "Besides, I think shell get a kick out of it. Wait here."<br> <br> See, for Christmas Id gotten her a copy of <i>Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul -- </i>but Id also gone to Victorias Secret, grinning like a goon at my daring, and blown fifty bucks on a lacey black teddy. Shed blushed when she opened that present, the night before wed all flown to our various homes for Christmas break. And then, her long lean body cupped in black lace, shed lain back in my arms and kissed me as I fingered her, gently, her hand on top of mine.<br> <br> So, that night -- she didnt wait till January sixth -- they make me wait in the hallway outside of Evas overheated dormer room. So I fold my arms and lean back against the wall. I couldnt keep the slaphappy grin off my face.  Somebody walking past to his own room gives me a look and I shrug. One of them inside giggles. "Come in," says Jamie, and I open the door, and theres two tall blond girls in black lace, Jamie striking a supermodel pose, her golden curls snaking down her back, Eva half-insolent, half-amused, one hand on a startlingly bare hip, crypto-sexy with her short, short hair and those absurd office-nerd glasses. "Get in here," she says. "Close the door." And then Jamies kissing Eva, theyre wrapped up in each other, bare legs twining around bare legs, arms wrapping around bare backs, hands on blond hair, black lace, bare skin.<br> <br> "I think," says Eva, "mm-hmm, I think he likes your Christmas present."<br> <br> "Epiphany," says Jamie. And then theyre reaching for me, Evas tugging on my sweater, Jamies unbuttoning my jeans, and between the two of them and me Im laid out in short order naked on the futon that takes up half the floor. They knelt on either side of me, grinning, and on their elbows took turns licking up and down my cock and each others mouths, my hands stroking lace and skin and long heavy curls and short, short hair like seals fur. I start laughing.<br> <br> "Whats so fuckin funny?" growls Eva, biting my thumb.<br> <br> "Its a straight-boy thing," I say, giggling. "Yall wouldnt understand. Ow!"</font></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="CENTER" valign="TOP"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="LEFT" valign="TOP"><font face="Georgia" size="2">Eva stumbles down the steep slope into the dim little bower, already soaked in twilight. I follow, perch myself maybe halfway down the slope, my skin tingling with inevitability. I reach up and catch Jamies fingers and I hand her partway down the slope into Evas arms.<br> <br> Its already begun.<br> <br> They tumble back together into the grass, all the green in it washing away into night, and theyre kissing like no one else has ever been in the world. Jamie already has her hand up under Evas kilt, has yanked those underpants, pulled them down to her knees.<br> <br> I stand there on the slope above them, wishing absurdly for another hit of hash smoke, thick and harsh. The first stars are coming out above us.</font></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="CENTER" valign="TOP"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="LEFT" valign="TOP"><font face="Georgia" size="2">"Its not," says Jamie, lying back in my arms, "like that. No. But Eva..."<br> <br> Shes wet with cold rain still, the winters morning rain thats lashing at my window.<br> <br> "Eva was in my room last night. All night."<br> <br> "I guessed," I say.<br> <br> "Youre not mad."<br> <br> "Im not mad."<br> <br> "Youre not jealous."<br> <br> "I told you. Its just not in me."<br> <br> "Because, I mean, we havent really talked about this. At all. And to be fair it ought to just be the three of us, all together, you know? But."<br> <br> "But."<br> <br> "It was like," she says, squirming closer to me, "it was like I couldnt stop. I couldnt stop, you know. Coming. I mean, she would kiss me, and blam! Or Id just be lying back on her bed, and she was lying there, half-asleep, and she would breathe on me, and Id start to whimper. My legs, my legs were still quivering when I walked over here..."<br> <br> I kiss the back of her head. "Should I call her?"<br> <br> She tenses, a little. "Why?"<br> <br> "You said. It ought to be the three of us, or."<br> <br> "Thats different," she says. "You get that, dont you? This, this is just the two of us. Were still?I meant, her. Anything with her. Except, last night."<br> <br> "It wasnt."<br> <br> "It wasnt. And thats okay?"<br> <br> "Yes," I said, kissing the back of her head again. "Its okay."<br> <br> And I hold her there, as she falls into a shallow sleep, and I hold her, not moving, for two, maybe three hours, till she wakes up, wanting coffee.</font></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="CENTER" valign="TOP"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="LEFT" valign="TOP"><font face="Georgia" size="2">"Oh, fuck," says Eva, her knees up, one now-bare foot planted on Jamies blue-jeaned ass bobbing as Jamies mouth works its magic on Evas cunt. "Oh, fuck. Hey. Unh." She hooks her glasses off, her eyes quizzical and blue, tiny now atop those cheekbones. "Straight boy. Get your skinny ass down here."<br> <br> Shes not the best kisser in the world, Eva. Too aggressive, too pushy, too straightforward with her tongue trying to climb between my teeth. Maybe she kisses girls differently, I dont know. Her tits are bigger than Jamies and absurdly soft, like slowly deflating balloons. She shivers as I brush a nipple with my hand, and then Im tugging her T-shirt up and over her head. Evas lying back in the dark, color-leached grass, and Im sucking one of those nipples cool and pebble-hard into my mouth, and Jamie is swarming up her body next to me, taking charge of the other breast. I reach down past Evas rumpled skirt and stumble into Jamies hand there. Our fingers tangle together, slicking themselves as they slip along the lips of Evas cunt.<br> <br> "Oh," she says. "Oh, fuck."</font></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="CENTER" valign="TOP"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="LEFT" valign="TOP"><font face="Georgia" size="2">It lasts, what, most of January? And on into February, too. We all three of us went to the GLBT Valentines Dance, Jamie femmed to the nines in a slinky black minidress and fishnets and heels you could kill somebody with, and Eva crossing more than a couple of lines with her engineers boots and her tight black jeans and her "Some of my best friends are gay" T-shirt that gets stripped off almost immediately once were inside, leaving her in a black satin bra with straps as wide as a thumb. A black hearts painted on her belly, dripping black tears past her navel to her big silver belt buckle. Me, Im doing the delicate pretty-boy goth thing: black jeans and black Chuck Taylors and a black poets shirt?yes, black; pride of my wardrobe -- hair hanging loose, face paled with powder, lips lipsticked black, eyes rimmed with mascara by Jamie, who giggled at how squeamish I am about people poking about my eyes and cursed how thick my lashes are. "You dont need this shit," she said. "You lucky bastard." The music loud and fast and thick, Jimmy Sommerville singing that unreal falsetto over pounding gospel pianos, girls dancing with girls, boys with boys, colored lights flickering and flashing everywhere in the dark basement. But girls were dancing with boys, too, and boys with girls, of course, and none of it mattered at all, we didnt think, we just did. It was Eva danced up to unlace my shirt, it was Jamie stood behind her, grinding against her, cupping her crotch. It was me between the two of them, humping to some dusty disco hit, it was some random stranger, boy or girl, nibbling my ear as I watched the two of them dancing slow, stumbling drunk, Jamies hands wedged into Evas back pockets. It was some boy named Craig or maybe it was Frank I danced with, his butt in my crotch, my hands snaking along his shirtless chest, skin stretched thin over hard ribs, tough tight muscles with no soft tits anywhere to be found. His cigarette-smokey mouth I kissed, narrow little lips nibbling at my tongue, as Jamie and Eva cheered.<br> <br> "Ah," says Jamie, "all he needs is a good fuck."<br> <br> "And Im just the man to do it," says Frank, or maybe Craig, and what the hell, right?<br> <br> Like now: like now, we arent thinking, I didnt consciously plan to be lying back in the cold grass, kissing Eva as she lies back against me, she didnt have to think to sit in my lap, lie back in my arms, Jamie isnt thinking as she kneels again to finish what she started, her shirts gone, her bras gone, and she didnt care about how her bare ass would be hanging out in the night air like it is now when she unbuttoned her jeans and shoved them over her hips so that I or Eva, I forget which, could ease a finger into her cunt. Jamies curls spill madly down her back, glowing in the eerie twilight, and Im not thinking about how Eva must taste to her or what her knees must feel like wedged into the not exactly muddy ground. I dont care that one of my wingtips has already fallen off, that burrs have snagged the sleeve of my jacket. As Eva begins to shudder and come, one hand pulling out a clump of grass, her head tossed back as I nibble her throat, as I look down across her heaving belly to see Jamies eyes peering up at me over the sparse dark hatching of Evas pubic hair, as Jamies eyes crinkle in a smile buried between Evas legs, as all of this is happening at once all Im thinking, I think, is <i>now,</i> and <i>now,</i> and <i>now?</i></font></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="CENTER" valign="TOP"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="LEFT" valign="TOP"><font face="Georgia" size="2">Me and Eva, hanging out alone, sitting on the fire escape outside the old Finney building, smoking cloves and drinking Jenny Creams. Its March, and unseasonably warm, and Jamie isnt feeling too well, so we arent doing what wed thought wed be doing, which was seeing the 9:30 showing of <i>The Five Thousand Fingers of Dr. T.</i><br> <br> "Hey," says Eva, and I pretty much know what she means, so I kiss her.<br> <br> We dont turn on the lights in her room and its like its the first time all over again, getting nervous as we undress each other with fumbling, frantic fingers. It <i>is</i> the first time, really. Because, you see?<br> <br> "Did you bring a condom?" she asks, in my ear. "Christ." She snorts. "I never have to think about that crap."<br> <br> ... in all wed done, Id never actually, <i>well</i>. Not with her.<br> <br> Lying back, half-lit by the lights out on the quad, glasses gone, vulnerable and delicate and -- fuck! -- <i>scared,</i> even, this amazing lanky force of nature, waiting for me, hunched over her, suddenly ashamed of my burning cock, shoved into a latex sleeve and pointed at her like a sneer. "Hey," she says. "Hey. You chickening out on me?"<br> <br> She was hot and wet and I slipped so easily into her. She wrapped her legs around my butt and her arms around my back and said, <i>"Just hold it here, a minute, just a minute,"</i> into my ear, and we lay there until it got to be too much, and I started to pull and push even as she started to buck under me. And then I was fucking her in a frenzy, slamming into her over and over and over again, her thrashing there on her futon, throwing her head back, growling and gasping and bellowing, raking my butt and my shoulders with her short and stubby fingernails, pulling my hair, me working one arm and then the other under her legs, lifting them up until her thighs were pressed against my chest, her knees over my elbows, her eyes wide open and stunned and grey in the dim light, my cock sliding in and out and in again, smooth, well-oiled, stroking deep and out again, and again, and again -- I felt it, the orgasm, starting to build a wave in the back of my head, in my butt, in my ankles, and like a surfer I tried to swim out to meet it, not caring about where she was, what she was doing, trusting her to look out for herself, but something -- the angle, the mechanics, the light, the moment, <i>something -- </i>something went awry. The wave washed past me and left me flickering in its wake. As I slowed, dulling, Eva began to thrash wildly under me, grabbing the sheets, bucking as she yelled incoherently about something, fuck, fuck, goddamn, goddammit all to fucking <i>hell.</i> Hot pain lanced the head of my cock. I pulled out, and she nearly hit me. I caught her wrist.<br> <br> "Fuck," she said, trying to yank her wrist free. Panting harshly. "Fucker."<br> <br> "It hurts," I said, clipped. Holding her wrist. She trembled, and hearing that, her face softened suddenly, the scowl melting away.<br> <br> "You didnt," she said.<br> <br> "No," I said. "I didnt."<br> <br> "Oh," she said, and I let go. "Oh. I couldnt. Either."<br> <br> "We could," I said, and she nodded, "Maybe later." But we fell asleep and didnt wake up till morning, and Jamie had been calling my room all night, looking for me.</font></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="CENTER" valign="TOP"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="LEFT" valign="TOP"><font face="Georgia" size="2">But now, now, now Jamie lies back in the grass, naked, breathing so carefully, very carefully so as not to disturb the orgasm were building within her, patient tinkerers that we are, our fingers and our tongues playing together on the lips of her cunt, the tense little bud of her clit, the edges of her nipples, the rippling skin along her flanks, the shivering gooseflesh of her arms and thighs, the whorled pucker of her ass, the humid cups behind her knees. I can feel it, what were building within her, me and Eva: delicate, intricate, interlocking crystals full of light, shutting out the night around us, swallowing us all inside it, this inhuman thing that doubles and redoubles itself, as shivery cold as the night breeze that runnels over my bare back, growing on its own now with no help from us, spiking into her like salt, seen through a microscope, and she trembles at the hugeness of it all, oh, oh?and as she comes, her mouth is open, just, her eyes are shuttered, and as she comes, I look to Eva, who built all this with me, but she is looking at Jamie, and her face is closed, sealed up, unreadable in the light of this wondrous thing weve made.</font></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="CENTER" valign="TOP"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="LEFT" valign="TOP"><font face="Georgia" size="2">The moon. If you stare at the moon, if you fix something, a tree branch that isnt moving in a breeze, thats still and hanging there, between you and the moon, if you fix your eyes on that, and concentrate, you can just barely see the moon move. The rotation of the earth under you, spinning you away from it, slowly but inevitably. You can see it, and feel it all. The stars, wheeling ponderously away.<br> <br> "Did you bring any condoms?" asks Jamie.<br> <br> But Ive already come, I dont say. Standing, my pants around my knees, the head of my cock rolling on Jamies lips, hot and wet, Eva behind me, her hands, only, cupping my ass, one spit-slick finger sliding inside, oh shit, oh. The come lost in the darkness. But I had brought them. Maybe John hadnt seen me slip them into my jacket pocket, but I had. Id known. I fish one out, my lazing cock slowly shaking off its stupor. Eva chuckles there in the darkness, her hair silvered in the moonlight.<br> <br> Jamie takes the packet from me and rips it open with her teeth, squats over me, unrolls it carefully down the length of my half-stiff cock, which is more than half stiff when shes done. I reach for her, my hand tingling, and she shakes her head, almost as if Id known she would. And, "No," she says, before any of us can say anything else, "not me."<br> <br> Eva sits up, in the grass. "I," she starts to say, but doesnt finish whatever it was.<br> <br> Jamie sits beside her, and kisses her, gently, and they lie down together, Eva on her back, and Jamie beside her, stroking her thigh. Beckoning. I stand, lightheaded, as if the air at the bottom of that bower is richer somehow, funkier, as if Ive suddenly been shot to the top of a mountain. But I cant see anything. Its dark.<br> <br> "Here," says Eva, or maybe Jamie. "Come on," says Jamie. Im pretty sure.<br> <br> I kneel there, between her knees. I kiss her. She kisses me. Then Jamie kisses her as I feel for her cunt, where it is, where I am. Jamies hand meets mine, and then Jamies hand is on my cock as Evas hands spread herself and I plant my own hands to either side of Eva, my arm brushing Jamies belly, Jamie guiding me inside.<br> <br> Someone starts to say something, someone else stops their mouth with a kiss. Someones fingers are in my mouth and they have that tang, that musk, but for the life of me I cant tell whose, whose fingers, whose cunt. My legs, Evas legs, Jamies legs all tangled together, I cant tell whose is whose. Whose hand is clenched around my butt, whose breath is hot and thick in my ear. Im kissing someone, and I dont know who it is.<br> <br> But I know whose cunt surrounds me. I know where my cock is.<br> <br> I try to find Jamies cunt, try to reach for it with my fingers, to be inside her, too, but its too awkward. I cant. Eva is moving under me, I catch myself, dig my knees into the ground I suddenly notice is cold and damp. Dirt grits under the heel of my hand. Its Jamie stroking my back, murmuring something I cant make out. Its Eva, moaning. Coming. Coming, even as I feel it swarm up from behind me and pounce, my muscles jerking as it all comes pouring cleanly out of me. Its over, all over. Almost before I knew it had begun.</font></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="CENTER" valign="TOP"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="LEFT" valign="TOP"><font face="Georgia" size="2">March, and were walking through the Arb, Jamie and me, along the narrow path between the two reservoirs, random wisps of fog steaming up from the grey unruffled water. Our winter coats hanging still in the still air.<br> <br> "We cant," she says, resting her head against me. "Not any more, okay?" And I want to ask her why shes looking for my approval. None of this had ever been my idea, after all.<br> <br> But I dont.<br> <br> "Its just," she says, "its so confusing. When its just you, and just me. I know. You know? I know what you want. I know what I want."<br> <br> I stoop down, pick up a rock, utterly fail to send it skipping across the lake. It sinks, and the ripples are swallowed in the slowly seeping fog.<br> <br> "They say," I tell her, "that the triangle is the most stable shape there is."<br> <br> "Thats horseshit," she says.<br> <br> "Thats geometry," I say.</font></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="CENTER" valign="TOP"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="LEFT" valign="TOP"><font face="Georgia" size="2">Eva ungainly, pulling up her underpants, her glasses already back on her face, a silvery sheen of moonlight masking her eyes. Jamie, naked, holding up Evas kilt.<br> <br> "Thats it, then," says Jamie, as if answering a question.<br> <br> Eva freezes. Then slowly takes the kilt and wraps it around her waist. Buttons it. "Well?" she says. "What do you have to say about it?"<br> <br> And I realize with no little astonishment its me shes talking to.<br> <br> "Anything?" she says.<br> <br> And I open my mouth and realize I have no idea what shes talking about.<br> <br> "Shit," says Eva, to Jamie now. "It was never <i>him,</i> you know. I mean?"<br> <br> "That doesnt matter," says Jamie. And Im starting to think maybe none of us has any idea what any of us is saying. Or thinking.<br> <br> Eva pulls her T-shirt over her head. I am uncomfortably aware that I am naked, and it is chilly outside in Ohio in early May, at night. She shrugs into her cardigan, kicks a foot into a boot. "Well?" she says, to me again. "Is this it?"<br> <br> "Its not up to me," is what I say.<br> <br> And Eva says, "All right."<br> <br> And she walks away.</font></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="CENTER" valign="TOP"><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="LEFT" valign="TOP"><font face="Georgia" size="2">Back at the end of October, and whats trying to pass for a homecoming party is too loud and trying too hard and theres a whole bunch of white kids in expensive clothes dancing to "Fight the Power" and even though me and Eva are both white, and her jeans were probably a pretty penny at Unique Boutique, and I was wearing my magic four-button black-and-green check jacket, were both sniggering at them. Thats when the Most Amazing Girl in the World comes back from the bathroom, and shit, would you look at that? She brought me a fresh cup of beer. Damn.<br> <br> "Look at you," she says, but I cant stop looking at her, those amazing blue eyes, that hair, that unbelievable head of shaggy gold. "I leave you for a minute and youre already macking on somebody else," she says. You hear that? She says "macking on." Is that not Amazing?<br> <br> "Naw," I say, "you dont get it. This is Eva, shes like, one of my best friends. Shes a lady-killer, like me. Eva, this is Jamie, and I saw her first."<br> <br> "You wanna fuck anyway?" says Eva, grinning sharply.<br> <br> "Some other time, maybe," says Jamie, and that was that.</font></td> </tr> <tr> <td> <center><b><font face="Georgia" size="5"><img src="graphics/onthedottedline.gif"></font></b> </center></td> </tr> </table> </font></td> <td align="CENTER" valign="TOP" width="226">  </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="488"><font face="Georgia" size="2"><table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" width="474"> <tr> <td align="LEFT" width="8"><font face="Georgia" size="2" color="#CCCCCC">..</font></td> <td align="CENTER">  </td> </tr> </table> </font></td> <td align="CENTER" width="226"></td> </tr> </table> </p> </body>