Sex With The Most Repressed Man In The Universe
Two hours after I called him tiger and I kissed him, those incredibly supple lips drinking me up, and I'm still sitting on his bed, wondering if he's gonna make it home. Which seems kind of ridiculous, after what I saw him do down at the river, but I guess this is like all those scenes where the lovers and mothers and sisters and wives wave goodbye to their soldier men and send them off to fight the good fight, and the lovers and mothers and sisters and wives sit on beds, or read novels or knit or something, the soldier men out there somewhere, in the dusk, fighting or bleeding or dying. I don't want to think about that.
But it's two hours later anyhow, and I changed out of my dress because I felt stupid in it, not to mention kind of guilty and sad, but only in a free-floating, loosely moored way -- I hung the dress up with one of Peter's hangars in his almost-empty closet where it sits now, like a deflated meringue. It felt good though, kissing him in it.
I change into one of his sweaters and a spare pair of jeans, and they smell just like him, and I spend the next hour and a half sitting on the bed, inhaling him in, and thinking about what a fuck-up the wedding must have turned into, and how I wish I didn't have to eventually go back and be mature and responsible about it all. I have no real desire to be mature and responsible right now. All I want to do is sit on the bed and rub the fabric of Peter's sweater over my stomach and think about how if his lips were that smooth and soft, then what would the rest of him be like?
And a little while after that there's a quiet approaching whir, and he's suddenly there, as if by magic, and when he pulls off the mask I'm expecting a big cheesy grin, which couldn't be further off the mark -- he's wincing hard, and he plucks at the lycra or whatever it is on his chest and he says "Ah god -- get this off, get this off --" and it wasn't quite how I'd anticipated seeing his body (no erotic-fantasy slow-veiled peeling striptease) but there it is anyway when he rips the top of his suit over his head and drops it on the floor.
"Ouch -- ah, jeez --"
He's kind of hopping and grimacing and I see the problem.
"God, Peter -- what did you --" then I remember soldier's wives and correct myself. "I'll get some water and a cloth."
"There was an explosion -- the cars -- there was battery acid --"
"Hold still," I say and I'm amazed by how mature and responsible I sound -- me, white-trash little MJ, with the cloth and the water and the helpful hands. I'm amazed I turned out this way. I'm using dunked cloth to bathe the spot under his ribs where the skin is raw and blistering and still kind of sizzling. I sound very calm and my hands are very steady.
"It's okay. It's alright. I think we got it." He's sitting on the bed now, with me kneeling beside him, dunking and bathing. "How does that feel?"
He eyes me, warily I think, though I can never be quite sure with Peter.
"Better. Thanks."
"Is there more?"
He shakes his head.
"No more burns, but, ah, I think there's something on my back."
"Let's see."
We jockey for position and he ends up standing, turning around, and his body would be breathtaking if it weren't for the big piece of metal jutting out of an ugly cut to one side of his spine. I frown at it.
"Damn, you really did a job on yourself..."
He grimaces, still holding the cloth to his burn, staring at the indentation we made on the neat expanse of his bed.
"Actually, I think this time the job did one on me... I don't think I'm quite recovered yet."
He means from Octavius. I chew my lip and think.
"I need to get this metal out. Do you have gloves? -- dishwashing gloves, anything --"
"Under the sink."
I pull the gloves on -- pink, a kind of hospital lozenge pink -- and watch him lean over the bed for support, and we're gonna do it when there's a sudden knock and a loud voice in a glottal accent and Peter rears up and actually looks alarmed.
"Oh shit -- my landlord..." He blinks at me. "We've gotta -- oh man, we've gotta hide you --"
"What?"
"MJ, the rules here are no drugs, no pets, no girls, and if I break them I'll be out on my ear. Please, just -- I'm coming! -- can you..."
I nod quickly, and I'm not offended, in fact quite the opposite -- this is more like it, this is more like me, the me I'm familiar with, from highschool days of boys on motorbikes and damp gropings and sneaking in through back doors or crawling in through windows.
He grabs a navy blue bathrobe to hide his red-blue pants, kicks his suit top and mask under the bed, and holds my arm with me tucked in behind the door, out of sight. As his landlord harangues him in Polish or whatever I grip his forearm and stroke the hairs there with the pad of my thumb. I can see the little bulge in the material of his robe where the metal piece sits. God, that must really hurt. There's sweat in his hairline.
"Yes, yes, I understand...no, I'm sure I can get it by then...no, it won't be like last time...absolutely, no question..."
There's not much to the conversation really and then it's over and he's closing the door and I'm standing there holding his arm and grinning.
"I'm sorry..." he says.
"No -- god, don't apologise. C'mon, let's get that metal out of you."
Assuming positions, with me and the rubber gloves like a cheap porn flick, and excepting that he's in pain I'd be giggling, but I don't think he'd quite get the joke. That's okay. He takes a deep breath and I grasp the jagged metal firmly and pull hard, once -- he grunts and I stumble back a little with the piece in my hand. I drop it in the sink.
"Wait -- I need to clean this up..."
More cloth and water.
"Peter this is really deep, you might need stitches or something..."
"Nah, it's okay." He looks, tilts his back experimentally. "I heal up pretty quick."
And I can see now that's true, because the cut is pinching itself together gradually, from the outer edges to the centre. I find it a bit hard to take in. Superheroes, supervillains, superhealing -- if my own life wasn't like some bizarre fucking fairytale I'd hardly be able to believe it. As it is, I blink and move on.
"Turn around then, let me check that burn."
There's still a raw patch near his diaphragm, but it's not too bad.
"Looking better -- have you get some antiseptic cream or --"
"Under the sink."
Of course, silly me. I toss the gloves back in, find the tube of cream and squeeze some into my palm.
"Hope this doesn't sting."
He grimaces.
"Not really."
I think then about how often he does this -- what, twice a day? Three, four times? Twenty-four seven, three hundred and sixty-five days a year for the last two years, comes to a total of... I give up adding wounds together. Math was never my strong point.
"So, this is what it's like?"
He meets my eyes. He gets it immediately.
"Pretty much."
He looks -- not resigned to it -- accepting. I wonder if my face looks the same. I wonder if I really have what it takes to be a soldier's wife, but I guess I'm about to find out.
I smooth cream on his burn, then slip around him to put some on the cut. His head follows me. And when I came back to his arm, he's unabashedly staring. He looks grateful, needy. I think I know what he needs. I lick my bottom lip and speak quietly.
"I stole your clothes."
"I noticed."
His eyes are bright, and his voice is barely above a whisper. I get a sudden hot clench in the crotch, like a lightning strike.
"Do you want them back?"
The look on his face is like God took amazement and desire and swirled them together. I kiss him, because he deserves it, and because it was so much fun last time... I love his lips. Like a girl's lips, flexible and yielding. When we break, there's the sound of panting. I hope the landlord doesn't have his ear to the door.
I let him help me strip off the sweater. And then I guide his hand to my breast. If I wasn't sure that Peter is a virgin before, his expression now confirms it.
"Mary-Jane," he says, and I say sshh, and slide my hands over his chest and abdomen just to verify what I already know to be true, the softness, and to see the way his eyelids flutter down and his mouth opens, that sweet gasping sound emerging, like the departing of a dying man's soul.
I kiss his jaw, his neck, his chest, everywhere I can reach with my mouth without bending down. When he drags my head back up with both hands, he's frowning with confusion, and it takes me a second to figure it out -- he can't believe this is happening. I smile at him. Hell, I can't believe it either, but I'm not gonna let it slow me down.
Ah boy, those kisses, those long grinding kisses, when we gain momentum and then ease off and then work up speed again. And that's not to mention what our hands are doing. We stop sucking each other's air long enough for me to push his head down to my nipple, finally, and when he surfaces I think I can't believe it, it can't be true -- can that be Peter's face, guileless, open as a floodplain, now with a sheen of sweat and honest-to-god animal lust? -- I've never seen him let go of anything less pure than mere anger, it's like he keeps his baser emotions hidden away from prying eyes. But it's there and it's real, and as he backs me onto the bed I remember that he's a grown man, and a soldier too, and that making love and having sex are still just the same thing after all.
Anyway, I like it -- I admit it, I've always liked it. And it's not such a stretch of the imagination to see it in Peter -- I was the one who called him tiger.
Now he purrs up my body, and he seems to like what his mouth finds here and there because he's grinning with his eyes closed, and he gets to my face and looks at me as we kiss, and he looks so damn happy that I start laughing in his mouth.
"What's so funny?"
"You," I say. "This. Us."
"Yeah." His best reply.
And he sighs, like he's replete. And we haven't even fucked yet.
"Kiss me again," I say, and then look down the length of me on the bed and then back at him, a big glowing neon sign for a guy who was once myopic.
He blinks, then kisses my mouth, my neck, my collar, each breast in turn. He reaches for the buttons on my jeans and I love this anticipation, this jerking and trembling and breathing. I forget the fact that this probably doesn't really align with our respective romantic visions of beginnings -- the hard little bed in his dingy little room. It doesn't matter -- not to him, I don't think, and certainly not to me. Most of my fantasies involve grittier scenarios anyway -- my cheerleader legacy.
But right now I forget that altogether, my mind is on other things -- like how slow-fast I plan to take this, and how rapidly Peter will learn (a quick study, I'm thinking), and how it feels to have his mouth on the skin between my navel and my pubic hair -- he's figured out the buttons pretty fast, they're his pants after all -- and how I love his face in profile, love his face all over, love every extraordinary part of him in fact, and now his fringe brushes my stomach like spiderwebs and my brain goes into overload, and I refuse to think anymore today, that's it.
That's it. That's all you're getting.