Chapter 17 *** Rose Knows
17
...fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night... All About Eve (Bette Davis)
As the days dragged into weeks and then into months, Rose drifted further from me. Several times I found her hanging around near my room, as if she wanted to come in and talk to me, but she always made some excuse and was on her way. She still came over for help with homework, and we still chatted about school and other little things, but it seemed that she was putting distance between us, as if she just wasn't as interested in hanging out with me as before. Our movie nights grew fewer and fewer, until finally we stopped watching movies altogether. She had begun to talk more and more about girls she knew in school, and how she anticipated hooking up with Brittany and her posse next year in junior high. It seemed like she was finally starting to find a niche in what I perceived as her peer group, and their interests seemed to be taking a more central role to her than ours had been. With a slowly dawning horror, I realized I was watching a replay of my life with Lilly. It hurt so much more than I wanted to admit, that I had let myself get so close to her that her absence caused me such horrible, real pain. It was actually physical, the pain in my chest, the hollow ache in my heart, and I would have pulled it out to escape the torment if I could have. I tried to rationalize it away with the thought that she was growing up, and probably starting to outgrow our friendship, but that actually made it worse. The thought that I needed her more and more just as she seemed to be needing me less and less, ripped through me like a werewolf on meth, like the hammer of Hell just kept smashing into my gut.
I let her 12th birthday slip by with only a card pushed under the door of her apartment. I had scrawled the words "Love, Jack" inside the card, and almost scratched out the word Love, because I was so miserable over the loss, before realizing how awful that would look. I actually cried myself to sleep that night, feeling in full measure the horrible parallels that had claimed us; just as she had become another Lilly to me, I had become another Stan to her; distant and drifting further away all the time. I cursed myself for a damned fool as I sank into the freezing depths.
Four months went by in this grotesque fashion. I still saw her several times a week, and she still smiled and joked with me, but the distance was palpable, the parting of the ways all too real. She stopped by my room about once a week now, and while we were still able to make comfortable small talk, I could see an edge there, a rawness that she couldn't conceal, and I supposed it was politeness on her part that was making her give me as much time as she did. Most of the time we were together, she kept her head down, as if it were difficult to look at me. I felt I should say something to release her, but I couldn't think of any graceful way to do it, and short and strained though it was, I would have missed even the bittersweet time with her. Toward the end, I resigned myself to just continue life the best I could. The truth was (I reasoned with myself), I had gotten way too comfortable. I had stopped looking for a "real" job long before, content to just hang out in the clubhouse and vegetate. As if this were a light bulb suddenly turning on over my head, I knew then that I should treat Rose's cold shoulder as a wake-up. This was a clarion call from the universe. It was time to pick myself up and get on with my life, get a real job and get on with the business of wishing I were dead.
It was late afternoon of a frosty February Friday when I had this revelation, and I spent the rest of the night trying to make myself feel I deserved to be congratulated on having escaped my doomed friendship with Rose. The night was almost over, it must have been past 11:00 pm, when Rose appeared at my door, asking to talk. I stood back to let her in and she came in and closed and locked the door behind her. That locked door definitely got my attention; I knew something big was up. We sat together on the floor of my room like we always had in the past. She had something she wanted to say, so I just kept silent and waited for her to start.
"Jack," she finally said after a very, very long pause, and I knew she was scared to death and looking for the courage to say something horribly difficult to me. My heart plummeted into my stomach as I tried to think of what would cause her such pain. "Jac...," she began again, and the word caught in her throat, so that she had to clear it and start over, "Jack", and then with halts and pauses and a blush that colored her whole head right down to her neck, she managed to choke out the words that were devouring her.
"Jack," she said, head down, voice so small I could barely hear her in the quiet of the night, "I, uh, I, uh, I saw you. In the shower. That night. That one night. That one night you were, uh, you, uh, you were rubbing. Uh, rubbing, uh, your, uh, rubbing your, uh...," and her voice became so soft that I had to read her downturned lips to know what she said, "your penis." I was beyond shock. I could feel the blood leaving my face as my heart raced to pump it all into my intestines, where it gurgled and squeezed and tied me up in knots. I felt like I had been caught raping puppies in front of a kindergarten class. It was an unbearable sensation, far beyond wanting to be dead; more like wanting to be erased from the universe, never to have existed in the first place.
Rose was still talking, and it took a supreme effort of will to keep listening. She had been looking for me that night, she said, because she wanted my opinion on her first draft of the Alice paper. When she couldn't find me anywhere, she took a chance on a peek inside the men's locker room, where she had seen me masturbating. The sight had caught her, fascinated her, and even as she tried to turn and walk away (she told me), something had held her in place, keeping her eyes locked on the spectacle of me sliding my hand up and down the shaft of my manhood, on the rigid flesh, on the sight of the head of my penis disappearing into my fist and re-emerging as I stroked. Ever since that night, she said, she hadn't been able to get the image out of her head. She lay awake in her bed every night, replaying the scene in her mind over and over in slow motion, trying to recapture every last second of the experience, trying to zoom in on the sight of my penis, lathered and wet, gripped firmly in my hand. When she realized how much energy she was devoting to it, she became worried that I would find out, scared of what my opinion would be, afraid I would think she was a nasty, dirty little monster, a perverted freak. She had distanced herself from me, she said, because she didn't want me to realize that all she could think about was my penis. She didn't trust herself around me, was afraid that when she was with me, I would see her staring at my crotch, trying to visualize what lay beneath the fly of my pants. Even so, she spent all her time trying to come up with a way to repeat the experience, to see me naked again, to get another look at my penis. She knew she couldn't risk another shower peek, because I might catch her and put a stop to it all.
Then she dropped the real bombshell. She confessed to having snuck into my room to poke around sometimes when I was out running errands or taking care of stuff around the complex, spying to see what else she could learn about my penis without having to go to the embarrassment of asking me. She admitted that on those occasions when I was out, she often rifled through the drawers of my dresser, stripping and putting on a pair of my underwear to pretend she was me, trying to imagine me laying there with my penis hanging out. It was on those occasions, when she was reaching through the fly of my underwear to see what it was like to feel for a penis, that she rediscovered a pleasure she had left behind many years ago. When she was very little, she whispered, maybe three or four years old, she used to lay on her bed and rub her "coochie" because it felt so good. She didn't remember when she stopped doing it, but now, years later, as she had lain on my cot and reached through the fly of my underwear that she was wearing, she suddenly rediscovered how good it felt to touch herself down there, and she had been playing more and more, until she was at the point where she was diddling on a daily basis. Her newly reinstituted "coochie rubbing" sessions made her feel good, really good, and she couldn't imagine why she had ever stopped.
Then she told me that during her underwear sneak sessions, she had found my pornography. She proved it by retrieving the book from under the false bottom of the dresser drawer, and I almost vomited when she did. She said at first she was confused, dazed, to think I would be looking at porn; then later she was eaten alive by it, driven nearly insane with the idea, because she didn't understand it; or rather, she thought maybe she did, but was desperate to ask about it, talk about it, get more information, but she didn't know where to turn or who to ask. The more she thought about it, the worse it got. Men and women, naked and touching, and she began to see it everywhere she went; looking at couples walking around school, holding hands or canoodling, and like a waking dream, she couldn't help but visualize them naked and doing it. She sneaked back in to my room on many other occasions to look at the magazine in my drawer; she had looked at and touched the penises in the photos many times over, but that only increased her desire to see the real thing in the flesh again, and more specifically, to see MY penis. That was what finally stoked her curiosity to the point where she couldn't contain it anymore.
"The more I looked at your magazine, the more I got this weird feeling in my stomach, and when I rubbed myself down there while I was looking at it, the weirder I felt. I can't describe it, because I've never had that feeling before," she whispered, her voice still so soft that I had to strain to make out the words. "I mean, rubbing my... my vagina... felt really good when I was just doing it, like when I was little, but when I did it while I was looking at the magazine, I felt... really strange, really weird, like hot and cold at the same time, like a tickle that I couldn't reach, and then it felt, like, really, really good and like I couldn't catch my breath. And then I got so wet, so wet and sticky down there, and at first I was scared, I thought something was wrong with me, but I didn't get sick and I didn't feel bad, I just felt good, so good, and I wanted to keep making myself wet down there because it felt sooo good. And I knew you would know what it was, 'cause you had the magazine, and you knew about rubbing your... your penis... and I knew you were doing it to make yourself feel good, like the way it felt good when I rubbed my... my vagina... but I was too ashamed to ask you; ashamed to admit I snuck into your room, and ashamed to admit how much I enjoyed that feeling when I was looking at something I knew was dirty and nasty, and confused because you're so good and decent, you're a really really good man, but you had this filthy dirty awful magazine, and I was really really ashamed to admit I felt so good while I looked at those pictures when I rubbed my... myself. Down there. And now I'm so confused all the time, 'cuz I know about something that makes me feel really really good, and I know I shouldn't do it, 'cuz it's bad or evil or something, but I don't know why. And the whole time, I keep thinking about... it... about... penises. About...your... your... penis... Jack, your penis. I have to know. I have to see it again. Please? Please? I'm begging you, Jack, I can't even eat or sleep anymore, I feel like I'm going insane. Please just let me see your... your penis... one more time. I wouldn't ask if we weren't friends. I couldn't, if it was anybody else, I'd die of embarrasment. I'm almost there, anyway, and it's taken me months to work up the courage to do this. Please, Jack? Please? I won't even ask to touch it, I just need to see it, just need to know that what I saw was real, was a real... live... thing... on your body..."
Too many thoughts went through my mind, too many voices screaming to be heard. For long minutes, I felt my mouth struggling soundlessly to form first one sentence, then another. Finally, I managed to tell her, "Rose, I can't. If I did, I would get in real trouble. I could go to jail. I'm flattered beyond words that you want to see it, but I just can't do it."
"Please, Jack, please. I'm pleading with you, Jack. Look," and she shifted to her knees in front of me and clasped her hands together, "I'm on my knees begging you for this. Look, Jack... begging. Pleading. I trust you, I know you would never hurt me. We're friends, we're more than friends, we're best friends. You're my best friend in the whole world, Jack, please please please don't shut me out. I love you, you know I do, and you love me, you said you did, said you love me. We love each other the way friends are supposed to love each other. Friends don't hurt each other, they can't. See, I'm hurting now, Jack, hurting just to see it again. Don't hurt me, Jack, please, stop the pain, just let me see it again. Just once. Pleeease? I've already seen it once, it didn't hurt me then, how can it hurt for you to just show me one more time? Pleeease, Jack, just this one time, pleeease?"
We just sat there for I don't know how long; seconds that felt like hours. The look on her face was one of supplication that I'd never seen before. She really was suffering. I knew that if I gave in, I would be changing both of our lives forever, and probably for the worse; much worse. I had that on the one hand, and on the other hand was my love for her, and the friendship we had already shared, and the fact that she really wouldn't be asking me if she didn't think she could trust me. In the end, it was the friendship that won out; the friendship and my lovesick heart that was suddenly screaming for her in a way I thought I had learned to live with, but now realized I hadn't. I carefully checked the pool area and then scoured the entire clubhouse; we were alone, really, absolutely alone. We went back into my room, where I shut and locked the door. I made her sit on the cot, and I stood in front of her.
"Rose, you have to understand, this is very very bad. If anybody ever finds out I did this, I could go to prison for real. I could get locked up for a real long time, and raped every day by guys twice as big as me, and you'd probably never see me again. You can never tell anybody about this, do you understand? You have to swear it, this has to be a secret just between us, forever and ever." Her eyes were as big as saucers; she didn't say anything, just nodded vigorously, her ponytail bobbing up and down, and I knew she didn't think she could trust herself to talk at that moment. I undid my pants, which fell to the ground around my bare feet. I kicked the pants over by the cot and stood there in front of her in my shirt and underwear, trying to screw up the courage to take that last step. I deliberately blanked my mind as much as possible, then slid my briefs off in one smooth motion. My penis had already begun to stiffen and throb, and it suddenly swelled up and bobbed in front of her, fully erect. I could tell Rose had stopped breathing, and her expression was one of pure wonder; it seemed like the light of Heaven was shining in her face as her eyes locked onto my erection and drank it in. I just stood there like that, not daring to move or do anything to break the moment. Finally, she spoke.
"Why is it bigger, why did it go up like that, like in the magazine, like when I saw you in the shower?" she asked in a tiny, strangled voice. "Isn't it supposed to hang down?"
"Yes," I whispered, "it does hang down most of the time. But when I'm excited, when I'm... aroused, sexually aroused... it gets stiff like this. I get an erection. It's a natural reaction when I'm... excited."
"Why...why..." she said slowly, as she tried to grasp the implication of what I was telling her, "why are you... excited? Is it because of me? Are you excited because I'm looking at it?"
"Yes," I admitted, "you're the cause. Being naked in front of you makes it get hard." And as I said that, Rose started blushing furiously. From some well of strength that even she didn't know she had, she dredged up the nerve to ask the next question.
"Jack," she asked in that same tiny voice, and swallowed hard, "do... do... do you want to see me naked? I mean, do you want to be naked with me, like... like in the magazine?" When I didn't answer immediately, she continued, "Jack, I've been looking at myself naked in the mirror all the time lately, wondering what it would be like if it was you I was standing in front of instead of the mirror, wondering what you would think when you saw me, wondering if you'd look at me the way you look at those women in the magazine. Do you, Jack? Do you want to see me, see me... naked, I mean? Do you want to see what my naked body looks like?" I knew I should lie to her, tell her no, I didn't want to see her naked, but this was a moment in our relationship that allowed for no falsehood, and I couldn't answer her, all I could do was stand there silently and pray she'd do the right thing for both of us. She didn't. Without a sound, Rose stood and unbuttoned her shirt to reveal her training bra, then she slipped the shirt off and dropped it on the cot. She slipped out of her jeans and kicked them over on top of my pants, and I could see her panties were covered with delicate little roses twining around each other. She reached up behind her back to unhook the bra, which she let fall away to the floor, then just stood there hyperventilating, her big eyes suddenly grown twice as big, amazed by her own daring and not quite able to believe she had gotten this far. Her perfect beautiful little breasts were round and soft and tender, begging to be touched, capped by delicate nipples that stood at attention. She slipped her hands inside her panties and started to slide them down, then stopped. She was struggling with it, and I could see how badly she was torn. Several times she tried to pull them off, and each time she stopped herself.
"Jack, I want you to see me, I want you to see my cooch... my... my vagina... but I can't make myself do it." I started to reassure her that everything was okay, she didn't need to worry about it, but she hushed me up. "No, Jack, I mean it, I want you to see me, but I can't do it. Will you do it for me? Please? Will you pull my panties off, please, I really really really want you to see all of me." I just nodded dumbly, then stepped over close to her and dropped to my knees in front of her. Her breasts were heaving right in front of my eyes; the nipples jutted out from her chest, begging to be touched, all I would have had to do was to lean over three inches to put my mouth on them. I was so close, I could smell her skin, her soap, her natural aroma. I reached over and gently slid her panties down to her ankles, then helped her step out of them; she put her hand on my shoulder to balance as she did so, and I swear to God I don't know how I avoided touching her further at that moment, don't know how I held myself back from grabbing her hips and burying my face in her stomach, how I even avoided so much as reaching up to touch her hand reassuringly. She let go of my shoulder then, and stepped back so I could take in her whole body as I knelt there in front of her. It was still a little much for her, and she nervously covered her vagina with one hand and tried to cover both breasts with the other.
"Is this what makes you excited, Jack? Does seeing my body make you want to do the things in the magazine, make you want to do those things with me?" And she nodded at the stroke book where she had dropped it on the floor. I tried to tell her there was more to it than that, that it was complicated in a lot of ways that I couldn't explain to her yet. But the more I tried to think of what to say, the more I realized she was right, and I had to give in to the inevitable. It was really just as simple as that; she was a female and I was a male, and my body wanted her in ways that I couldn't deny. In the end I gave in, and just shut my eyes and nodded with a profound sense of shame, of having violated our friendship. "It's that weird feeling, isn't it?" she said, her voice a husky shell, a breathless maze of wonder that intoxicated and frightened me. "It's sex, isn't it? It's sex and... and... and f... fu... fucking... fucking, isn't it? Men and women, fuc... fucking each other..." Again, all I could do was nod. And then she asked the question I knew had been coming, the question I had been dreading like the plague ever since we started down this path, the question I needed so desperately for her to ask, even as I knew that for her to ask it was to doom us both. "Do you want to... to touch me like that, Jack? Do you want to touch me and make me feel good and... and... and fuck me?" As she said this, her hand fell from her breasts, to join the other hand in covering her vagina, as if seeking to block access to what she had just offered.
I felt like I was going to die, and partially because so much blood had gorged my penis that it seemed like there wasn't a single drop to spare for the rest of my body. The moment of silence that passed between us as I struggled with my answer was more potent than anything that had come before. Finally, I managed to choke it out, my voice a harsh rasp of what it should have been. "Yes, Rose, yes, I want to touch your body more than I want anything else in this world," I whispered. "I want to make purple passionate love to you. I want to... to fuck you until we can't even breathe anymore. But Rose, my angel, my beloved, sweetest of sweet things that ever were in this world, you're my friend, you're my heart and my breath, my reason for living, and I can't ruin that." I was on the verge of tears, and I knew I had to make her understand. "Can. NOT. Ruin. That. If I touch you like that, I'm terrified it would wreck things between us, that I'd lose you as a friend, and that's a loss I can't handle. I can't lose you, Rose, I can't. You are my beloved, you are the most important thing I've ever had in my life, and if I lose you now, I Would. Go. Insane."
"Oh Jack, you ass, you silly stupid man, don't you see it? You can't lose me. Ever. Ever. I'm yours, forever and ever and ever. I'm asking you now, Jack," she whispered. "I've been thinking about this ever since I saw you in the shower, and even when I was confused, it was only because I didn't understand. But I do understand now Jack, I'm ready now, I'm really really ready. Please, Jack, we've gone this far already, please do it, please touch me like the people in the magazine touch each other. Love me, Jack. Love me. Fuc... fuc... fuck me, put your penis inside my vagina and love me and fuck me and make me yours."
I shook my head. "No, Rose, I can't do that, I CAN'T! Don't you see it, beloved? So far, all we've done is look at each other," I said, doing my best to shut out the memory of my hands against her legs as I had pulled her panties off. "I'll still be in horrible trouble for what we've done so far, but I might not go to jail for it, or only for a short time, anyway. If I touched you like those people in the magazine, and we got caught, I would go to prison for sure. I want to, Rose, oh God, you can't begin to know how badly I'm burning to touch you, but I can't."
"Just touch my vagina, that's all, just touch it, feel it. I'm getting that weird feeling again, big time, it almost hurts 'cuz it feels so weird, and now I'm so wet down there again, Jack, what's happening? What does that mean, that I feel so wet down there? Will you just touch it, please?" Rose reached over and took my hand in hers, then tried to put my hand on her vagina. I felt the brush of her tender fur under my fingers and pulled my hand away as if I had burned it.
"No, Rose, I can't do it. Please, sweetheart, I'm begging you, you have no idea how difficult this is for me. This is torture. My body wants your body in the worst way. It's been so long since I've been with a woman. This is killing me, but we can't do it."
"Well then, don't touch me, just look at my body," she said, "and I'll do the touching, so it'll be me that gets in trouble, not you." She reached out to unbutton my shirt and pull it off, and I couldn't stop her. As I sat naked before her, she laid her hand on my bare chest. I tried to push her away, I swear I did, but my arms were numb, they didn't respond, and I didn't have the strength to even move away. It felt so good to be touched by someone, by anyone; and then to have that someone be my best friend, my beautiful little Rose, just sapped all my energy. As she slid off the cot and snuggled up close to me, her hand slipped down to my stomach, then came to a stop just above my pubic hair. Knowing the line she was crossing, she bit her lip tightly, then moved her hand down into the curly nest around my penis, stroking and caressing the short hair, feeling it between her fingers and rubbing her palm over it. Shyly, timidly, she touched my erection and stroked it with her fingers. My member responded by throbbing dangerously, and I knew then that I had moved all the way into Hell, and I gave in. She looked up uncertainly at my groan of pleasure when her fingers wrapped around the shaft. Taking her by the shoulders, I pulled her close, reached down, and started kissing her on the neck and face. Her firm little breasts were crushed into my chest, and my hands were roving over her back and stroking her hair. She looked up into my eyes and released my penis, then took my face in her hands and pulled my lips onto hers. I kissed her deeply for a few seconds, then gently worked my tongue into her mouth, which seemed to make her go weak. With a shock, I realized it was because I had penetrated her with my tongue; her first penetration of any kind; and I had deflowered her of that particular virginity. I eased her back onto the carpet, my tongue still exploring her mouth. It took a minute, then she started to respond, pushing her tongue into my mouth and breathing hard. As we lay there on the rug, caressing each other around the waist and French-kissing, I started to stroke and play with her nipples. As I pinched and rolled the sweet little buds that were now hard as diamonds, she gasped into my mouth, again almost hyperventilating, pushing her breath into me with a force that startled me. My mind was a house on fire with people trapped inside, screaming murderously at me, 'Get out, get out, get out!" My mind, my spirit, my heart, every part of me but one was shrieking at me to stop, but since that one remaining part was in the driver's seat of my body, I slipped my mouth down to her breasts and gently sucked and licked first one nipple, then the other. She just lay there, feeling the sensations washing over her body and not knowing what to make of it. She seemed to go limp in my grasp, and as she grabbed my hair and held on with all her might, I heard her panting, "oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, what are you doing to me, what are you doing, what is this, what is this?" For my part, it was like being with a goddess. She was my royal road to heaven, my goddess, and of one heartrending instant, I saw in myself a single mortal who wanted to worship her with my all. I kissed and licked my way down to her stomach, then to her thighs. She parted her legs to give me better access, and suddenly I was staring directly into the holy of holies, a temple whose entrance was veiled by the sweetest and silkiest of curtains, her baby soft pubic hair. I was completely out of control, watching someone else use my body to do these things. The lips between her legs were glistening, her soft downy fur was glowing, and I smelled a light, sweet odor that I had never smelled before, not even in my time with Lilly. My mouth was drawn to her valley by sheer animal instinct, nothing in creation could have made me pull back then. When my tongue first brushed the outside of her vagina, she gasped and stiffened. "Oh God, Jack, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes, oh, oh, oh," she babbled, clearly out of her mind with the overwhelming feeling. As I started gently sucking and lapping at her juice, her legs suddenly collapsed, draping over my shoulders as her heels landed on my back, then she slid her feet down until they were planted against the floor, and was pushing herself forward onto my mouth, trying to get as much of her pussy into my face as she could. I pushed my tongue deeply into her, and she gasped again. She grabbed hold of the top of my head and started to push down on it, urging me to lick deeper and harder. "Don't stop, don't stop, oh God, please keep doing that, oh God, oh God, please keep doing that, oh dear God, I can't believe it's possible to feel this good, how can this be happening, how can this be real?" When I had started eating her, I hadn't intended to bring her to orgasm; I hadn't planned that far ahead, I just wanted to get my mouth down there, wanted to suck up her love and savor the sweet sweet taste; but now I knew I had started something that I didn't dare stop. This was her first experience, that would color her view of sex for the rest of her life. I had to do it right, I couldn't let her down. I just kept licking and probing, riding her up and down with my tongue, lapping and slurping, to the sound of her moans of delight. "Oh God, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes, do it, do it, do it, do it, ooooohhhhhhhhh..." She made little explosions of breath every time my tongue brushed her clitoris, which spurred me on to a gentle but steadily increasing rhythm, flicking my tongue softly back and forth. I was totally unprepared for what happened next. As she went over the top, her back arched and she started shuddering violently. She jammed her fist in her mouth to keep from screaming, and I could see that she was in the throes of a full-body orgasm that seemed to rush over her entire frame. The effect this had on me was electric, and as I lay there on my stomach with my tongue in her vagina, my penis humping the carpet beneath me, I could feel myself explode, my juice shooting out and spurting up between the carpet and my stomach. Rose didn't know I had ejaculated, she didn't know anything except for the feeling of my tongue on her clitoris. I kept sucking and lapping, riding her bucking hips and never breaking contact. This was my little Rose's first time, and by God, it was going to be all the magic I could give her. As I kept sucking and licking, the orgasms just kept spilling over her, one after the other, until I think she had about five in all, each one making her body go rigid, the shocks spilling down her thighs, her vagina spasming and contracting, the juice literally shooting out of her and into my mouth. Finally, it was too much, I couldn't keep it up, and I eased back and started caressing and massaging the inside of her thighs, then stroking her face and hair while she caught her breath in ragged little gasps and gulps. Her legs were trembling, little bolts shooting up through her thighs and into her stomach. I inched my way up until we were face to face, and I stroked her neck and shoulders, telling her that I loved her and that I prayed to God I hadn't just ruined our friendship.
She just lay there, breathing, breathing, in and out, in and out, her eyes slightly unfocused as she gazed up at the ceiling, her chest rising and falling, listening to the sound of my voice as I softly murmured my love for her. Eventually, she took a huge breath, felt it fill her lungs in a way she never had before, and looked at me with amazement. "Jack, was that... was that... fucking?" she asked in a serious, adult voice I'd never heard her use before. "Is that what we just did, is that called fucking? Did I just fuck you?"
The wonder that swept through me must have shown on my face, because she grew even more solemn. "Where did you learn that word?" I wanted to know, to which she replied that she had probably heard it a long time ago, but last year she had heard kids at school using it (specifically Brittany's posse). She hadn't known what she was hearing at the time, but from the context, she assumed it was filthy. In the time since Brittany and friends had gone on to junior high, Rose had thought often about their stories of fucking their boyfriends and wondering what that meant, and if they were still fucking their boyfriends, or fucking somebody else by now.
"I need to know, Jack. Was that fucking?"
"No," I said, "what we just did is called cunnilingus. Most people call it eating pussy. That's what we did, Rose. I ate your pussy. Fucking is something else. When you were asking about it before, you were almost there, almost at the right definition. Fucking is when I put my stiff penis in your wet vagina and slide it in and out, or where you get on top of me and put your vagina on my penis and then just ride it." I picked up the magazine and turned to the center spread, a man laying on his back while his partner straddled him. The wonder in her eyes produced a trill in the pit of my stomach. "We talked about it before, when I told you that's where babies come from. When a man cums inside a woman, it's because of that. That's what fucking is. But there�s something else you should know. That feeling you had just now, when you felt so out-of-your-head good that you couldn't stand it, is called orgasm, but it's also called cumming, and it happens to both men and women. When men orgasm, or cum, that's how the sperm shoots out, and if it shoots into your vagina, that's when you can get pregnant. You remember when I told you about that?" Rose, still wide-eyed, nodded, and I continued, "Men cum pretty easy from that, from having their penis in a vagina, but a lot of times, women don�t. So it really isn�t fair to the woman, because a man has to have an orgasm, he has to cum, to make a baby, but women can get pregnant without ever cumming, without having an orgasm. If you ask me (and nobody ever will), that�s a mistake on God�s part. If women had to cum, if they had to have an orgasm in order to get pregnant, that is, if men had to pay that kind of attention to women, if they had to make them cum, before they could have babies, this world would be a lot happier place."
"So, a woman doesn't always cum from fucking? Does a man always cum from fucking," she wanted to know, "or does it sometimes happen that he doesn't?"
"Well, some men don't, but that's the exception. If a man can't cum, can't orgasm from straight sex, that usually means something's wrong. Most men don't have a choice, if they do it all the way to completion, they always end up cumming, usually in the woman's pussy, and that's when she can get pregnant."
"Well, can't a man stop? Doesn't he know before he cums that he's going to cum, and can't he just stop before he does, stop before he makes her get pregnant?"
"It's a real problem, angel, because it feels so incredibly good that most men can't control themselves. You're right, though, a man always knows when he's about to cum, sometimes he knows a good 4 or 5 seconds before it actually happens. But once you get to that point, of knowing you're about to cum, it's too late to stop it, you're past the point of no return. A man can't stop the cum from shooting at that point, but some men do use that 4 or 5 seconds to pull out and shoot their cum outside of the vagina."
"Well then, what happens to it?" she wanted to know. "I mean, when the cum shoots out, where does it go?"
"Right where you'd think, sweetheart. When a man pulls out, his penis is usually pointing at the woman's stomach, and that's where it shoots. Sometimes up on her chest, sometimes even farther, and it's sticky, but at least it doesn't go inside the vagina. Now, if I put a condom on my penis first, the sperm shoots into the condom instead of your vagina, and then you don't have to worry about babies. Some people have sex only for that reason, to make babies, but most people do it because it feels so good, especially if it's someone you care about a lot. In fact, that makes it much, much better, because you're sharing it with a friend. That's why fucking is also called making love, because it's such an excellent way to show someone how much you love them." I had to pause for a second, to let her absorb the information, and also for myself, so I could take stock of the conversation, of what I was telling her. "You know," I continued after a pause, "I shouldn't keep using that word. It's really kind of a harsh word, and it doesn't do justice to the act of making love. It's an adult word, fucking, but in an immature kind of way. It feels so strange to use that word with you, but in a way, it also feels kind of right. It's like we've crossed over into a special place, and we need a special language to talk about it. See, that kind of sex, fucking, is the most heavy duty thing men and women can do with each other, and it has to be special, it has to be right. You should never just fuck anybody, it should be somebody you love."
"Well, that's okay then, isn't it?" she said. "We're special, we're right, and I love you, you know I do, I feel it, I feel love! I feel love in my stomach and my chest and my legs and my arms and my head, and, and, and, oh God, I feel it in my... my pussy, I feel the love in my whole body. I love you Jack, and I want to fuck you, I want to feel your penis in my pussy, fucking me. I want us to fuck each other, fuck each other like lovers, 'cuz that's what we are now, Jack, we're lovers, I want you to fuck me and then, then, so I don't have any baby yet, I want you to pull your penis out and I want you to shoot your cum all over my tummy, I want you to cum and cum and cum, I want to feel your cum shooting all over my tummy..."
I closed my eyes, realizing I had to try again. "When you have intercourse for the first time, your first sex, your first... fuck, is one of the most important moments of your life." I opened my eyes; her face was only inches from mine, her eyes huge, her breathing shallow and hard. She must have been putting out waves of pheromones, because I could feel my own breath coming faster and harder, and I was starting to lose the thread of my thoughts. Her eyes were darting manically from side to side as she tried to climb past my flesh and into my soul, and I knew I was in very real danger of losing myself to the moment, of utterly burying myself in her... I tried to continue, "You have to know, you have to be sure it's someone who'll be important to you for the rest of your life. Your first time should be someone you'll love, not just now, but forever." I could feel I was starting to lose ground; I realized her heart was already telling her that I was someone she could love forever, and even though I was burning with the need to let her express that love, I was pointing the loaded gun right back at myself. I shook my head and turned away; looking into those huge beautiful brown eyes was driving me mad, and I couldn't lecture her and look at her at the same time. "Rose, I can't give you that sex. If I were to... to... to, fuck you, to, to put myself inside you like that, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be, uh... Rose, I can't... Look, Rose, you're 12, I'm 40, it would be wrong, you have to see that, angel. I just can't... fuck you. I do love you, sweetheart, you have to believe that, I love you with all of my heart and soul, I love you the way a man loves a woman, and I do want to, I want to make love to you and fuck you, I want it so savagely that it's making me sick inside trying to hold back, and I know you love me too, but you're so young, sweetheart, so very young, you're almost a baby, and I'm so old, sweetheart, I'm old enough to...." When I turned back to look at her, the confusion and fear in her face hit me like an icicle through the heart. Before I could say anything more, she had pulled on her panties and pants, faster than I would have believed possible, then she grabbed her bra and stuffed it in her pants pocket. I searched savagely for something to say, anything to heal the rift, to make it better, but of course I came up horribly empty. She was still putting on her shirt as she unlocked the door of my room and then she was gone. I leapt to the door, reaching out after her, but what could I say? What could I do? I could think of no words to bring her back, and I was too scared to run after her, scared of not knowing what to say once I caught up with her, scared that once I grabbed her and made her face me, she would have nothing but fear and pain to give me. The hopelessness and the inevitability of it hit me all at once. I was done. I was dead. I was now officially through with life. Closing the door, I cleaned up the jizz from the carpet and my stomach, put the stroke book back under the false drawer bottom (out of force of habit, I guess), put on my shorts and shirt, shut off the light, and curled up in a fetal position, in the dark, on the cot, to wait for the cops to come. I cried myself to sleep with my contact lenses still in, waiting.