Where the God of Love Hangs Out - Amy Bloom [66]
When Buster was fifteen and Lionel was twenty-five, Julia sent Buster to spend the summer with his brother in Paris. Buster spent his days riding the Métro, listening to music from home, and trying to pick up girls. At night, Lionel made dinner for them both.
“How’s it goin’? With the ladies?”
Buster shrugged. Lionel poured them both a glass of wine.
“Listen to me,” Lionel said, “and not to those assholes back home. You do not want to get advice from sixteen-year-old boys. You don’t want to be the kind of guy who just grabs some tit or a handful of pussy and then goes and tells his friends so they can say, ‘You da man.’”
“No,” Buster said.
“That’s right, no, you don’t. You want to be the kind of man women beg for sex. You want women saying, ‘Oh, yes, baby, yes, baby, yes’” and on the last “yes,” he got up, took a peach from a bowl on the counter, and sliced it in half. He threw the pit into the wastebasket and he put the fruit, shiny side up, in Buster’s hand.
“Here you go. See that little pink point. You got to lick that little point, rub your tongue over and around it.” He smacked Buster on the back of the head. “Don’t slobber. You’re not a washcloth. You. Are. A. Lover.”
Buster breathed in peach smell and he flicked his tongue at the tiny point.
“That’s it, that’s what I’m talking about. Lick it. It won’t bite you, boy. Lick it again. Now, you get in there with your nose and your chin.”
“My nose,” Buster said, and Lionel pressed the tip of Buster’s nose into the peach.
“Your nose, your chin. Your forehead, if that’s what it takes.”
Buster gave himself to the peach until there was nothing but exhausted peach skin and bits of yellow fruit clinging to his face.
Lionel handed him a dish towel.
“How long do you do it for?” Buster asked.
“How long? Until her legs are so tight around your head you can’t actually hear the words but you know she’s saying, Don’t stop, don’t stop, oh, my God in heaven, don’t you stop.”
“And then what?” Buster picked up another peach, just in case.
“And you keep on. And then she comes. Unless. Unless, you’re slurping away down there for ten minutes and nothing’s happening, you know, and all of a sudden she arches her back like this”—and Lionel arched his back, until his head was almost to the floor—“and she yells, Oh, Jesus, I’m coming.” Lionel screamed. And then said, “If that happens, she’s faking.”
Buster almost choked on this, the thought that he would practice all summer, become as good a lover as his brother, and then the girl would only be pretending to like it?
“Oh, why would she do that?”
Lionel shrugged. “Because she doesn’t want to embarrass your sorry ass and she also doesn’t want to lie there all night, waiting for nothing.”
“That happens?”
Lionel poured them both another glass. “Oh, yes. Sometimes you do your best, and it’s not good enough. So you man up, limp dick, shattered spirit. You pick yourself up and you say to her, Tell me what you really want. You say to her, Put your little hand where you want mine to be.” Lionel drains his glass. “And you do like she shows you. Don’t worry—the ladies are going to love you, Buster.”
And Buster wraps his arm around his wife’s soft waist, beneath her nightgown, and she pulls it up and places his hand on her breast. Their dance is Buster’s palm settling over her nipple, his fingertips sliding up the side of her breast, Jewelle rolling over to put her face next to Buster’s, Jewelle licking at the creases in Buster’s neck. Jewelle runs her hand along the smooth underside of his belly and he sighs.
“Oh, you feel so good,” she says. “You always do.”
“My Jewelle,” he says.
“Oh, yes,” she says. “No one else’s.”
They love this old dance.
“I think we should do it right away. We’re all here.” Jewelle has waited for Lionel to speak but he’s been lying on the couch for ten minutes, not saying a word.
“What is the ‘it’?” Patsine asks.
Jewelle looks at Patsine. Patsine has something pointed and sensible to say about everything, all the time.
“I