Slide - Kyle Beachy [78]
“Yeah well, no shit. So I need more training. So what. The beauty of hopping rails is that the old rail doesn't go away. There are still women. The old rail is the same as always. Skills like mine don't disappear. Nor's this mean the night has to be ruined. Look at the night. It is young. Younger than that neighbor you should avoid at all costs. What we'll do, Potter Mays, is find us some women.”
The bar was thick with smoke and the noise of language. So many words with so many intentions, words born from desirous agenda, well aimed, everyone in this room aiming, aiming. The ogre had not excelled at this exchange. But now, having failed at professionalism, he would retreat to the effortless realm of seduction. And he would take me with him.
“This girl, Edsel, I'm telling you. She comforts.”
“Forget the child for tonight,” he said. “I forbid you to touch that little girl. Trust me. You remember what sex was like at sixteen? The awkwardness? The are-you-sure-this-is-what-you-wants? Is this how a condom goes on? Why won't it roll on? See you next time my parents are out of town. Be a grown-up for once, Potter. Grown-up sex is a violent struggle. You don't want comfort. You want powpow and the bang train. Comfort is for the meek. Look over there. Not like that, easy with the stare. Just look. See them? Two friendly girls, all smiles. I'm about ninety-nine percent sure one of them is willing to lie down with you. And now before you say something, yes, she's got something in her face. Alright fine. Maybe she's a little bit downy. But cute still. What am I saying? Look who I'm talking to. Monsieur liberal art. You with the open mind. Plus I bet you've heard about the sex drives of the retarded, right? You put two retards in a room, they'll fuck for hours.”
Escape. There was always escape.
I drove home with every window open, radio off, sound of wind like whiteout. The house was dark and still. I slid into my dad's office and sat down to my empty e-mail in-box. I began to put together an album of songs. Her silver Jetta was full of shit music programmed into boy-scrawled CDs. She was out there now—I could see her through the crack where the curtain met wall—wandering circles in her parents’ driveway. I removed one disc and replaced it with another, and watched her. Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth…
I left the computer and stepped back into the evening. Now she was talking on the phone, one hand against the side of the garage, lifting and lowering herself through a series of careless pliés. I approached and she handed me a cigarette with the lighter. I smoked and made small circles of my own in our driveway. She looked up and mouthed sorry with tiny delicate angel lips. I picked up the basketball from her driveway and shot some jumpers. I walked circles and smoked my cigarette. I pulled a quarter from my pocket and flipped it, thinking heads I would go back inside, tails I would stay. Simplest of equations. T means stay. H means go. It was heads. I flipped it again. Heads. H, then H.
She closed her phone and approached me. I stepped backward from the driveway into the grass of her family's backyard, moving beyond the limits of the garage light. She was part of it, I wasn't alone in the process. Hello, body. Within her grasp I felt quiet and I felt warmth. We stood and collected each other. When I pulled, so did she. And grabbed. She went down to the grass, and I did too, and it was wet from the day's storm, and soft. Then lips and darkness and hair in my fingers and wet soft grass. My knees were between her knees. And for some time we stayed this way. We kissed playfully and then seriously, and then when the kissing moved from serious to necessary, our knees touched, and hers moved outward, and mine followed. I lifted her shirt from her waist and descended down to her bare stomach, brushed lips against untouchably soft skin, the smell