Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 27-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
“I don’t care if you’re the sort of feminist who doesn’t like to be picked up,” Ryan says as he carries me to the bedroom. I close my eyes. Dizzy. Ryan puts me on the bed and starts undoing the little buttons on my top. I had other plans for the buttons and how to proceed. Tempting, teasing, talking. I want to say, “Wait.” I say nothing. He tugs off my pants and my panties in one go. I’ll just let it happen. Without me.
After Ryan cums, he says, “I’ve decided to prepare you for your next lover.” As with other men I’ve been with recently, my orgasm—my lack of orgasm—isn’t acknowledged.
I get up, saying, “I’ve never had a lover prepare me for my next lover.”
“No?”
I scoop up my clothes and get dressed in the mildewy bathroom.
Ryan is in the living room looking at a book on building houses with bags of dirt. I stand next to him. He shows me photos of people filling the bags and moving them into position. He flips the pages, back to front, and the dirt bag houses appear to unbuild themselves.
I prepare to leave. Ryan opens the back door into the blackness of the alley and says, “I hope you don’t have far to walk.”
“I think I’ll catch the bus,” I say, motioning toward the deserted bus stop 20 feet away.
“Goodbye,” Ryan says and closes the door. Nice.
Young drunk guys in over-sized pants sit near me at the back of the bus, stinking of booze, speaking maybe Greek. I look out the window—holes of light in the blackness whiz by. Everyone gets off the bus before I do.
Putting my hair up, getting ready to take a shower, I think about Steve. The night he said I was sexy and beautiful. I recall sleeping well; it was the only time he stayed over night. He was unable to achieve an erection. In the morning, he asked if he’d snored, and I told him it sounded more like a wolverine devouring gerbils. We both laughed.
Steve sat on the edge of the bed, watching me pin my hair up, getting ready to take a shower. I was happy to close the bathroom door on my inability to arouse him. I rubbed Ivory soap on a thick orange washcloth and dreaded turning off the stream of hot water.
Steve was at the stove, making the tea, when I stepped quickly from the bathroom to my bedroom to look for something to wear. I was holding up a gunmetal gray jumpsuit when he appeared in the doorway shaking his head.
“Don’t wear that, Celia,” he said flatly.
I stuffed the jumpsuit back in the closet, and he came up behind me.
“When I saw that photo of you on Lavalife, before we met, I wanted to cum on your face.”
“Which photo?” I asked. I wanted to push him away, to get dressed, to have tea, to leave here, to be outside.
“The one where you have your hair up,” he said. “Like it is now.” His hands slid up and down my arms as I tried to put on my bra. He took the bra, dropped it on the floor and pulled me to the bed. I sat down awkwardly, naked. He propped me up on pillows against the headboard and unzipped his pants. He took out his penis and started stroking it. Leaning in close, he supported himself on the headboard with his other hand. Acrid sweat. His pudgy, semi-erect cock near my face.
The photo—an intense, unsmiling woman in a bathing-suit top, defined abs above the top of her short skirt, looking directly at the camera, showing her body to men. To him. The woman in the photo—taunting, teasing, asking for it—from the pages of Lavalife, Playboy, Hustler, a 1950s Sears catalog. Steve wants to cum on that face. In the photo. Jerking off, looking at the photo. My photo. Me.
The penis. The hand working it. His brain a private laboratory for reconstituting images and associations. I am stimuli—simulacrum—waiting, thinking. Alone. Observing the penis perform its penultimate biological function. Steve is imposing himself on my physicality, my identity, conjuring his idiosyncratic mélange. It is taking him a long time. The expression on my face probably isn’t helping. His hand moves faster. The headboard creaks. His penis is a blur of smooth flesh waggling around—knuckles in my face. I close my eyes. He ejaculates on my hair. Grunting, he lowers himself stiffly onto the bed and starts laughing. Laughing turns to coughing, and he rolls on his side, away from me.
“What?” I ask.
“I missed,” he says.
“I noticed,” I say, standing up, heading for the bathroom. I do not look in the mirror before stepping back into the shower.
***
A crow is growling on the sundeck, trying to push around the beach rocks I collected last summer. This crow has been here before with these antics. Why do crows always seem male? Another crow joins the first—smaller, blacker, shinier—it squawks, red throat. It might be the mother, berating the male who doesn’t seem to notice he is an adult now.
On TV, a documentary about World War II. Men wrote home to women waiting. One man’s elegant hand on paper wrote, “What I miss most is talking with you about the beauty of everything.”
