Authors: Jack Baran
Her tongue traces the shaft of his penis. “This can be a one time thing.”
“An ice breaker.”
“Exactly.”
“You’re probably a fantasy and this isn’t happening.”
Her juicy lips make a perfect O as they encircle him.
It’s happening all right. Pete needs to slow things down because when she starts sucking his cock things happen way too fast. Get a grip, you don’t want to come. Her mouth is wet, her throat deep. Slow down, don’t come. Her tongue is a slithering snake. Please don’t come. A tremendous force builds inside him. Don’t come. It feels so good. Don’t come. So good! Don’t! So, so good! Don’t come! Of course he does, after all he hasn’t been with a woman in three years, then suddenly a world class blowjob. Still, he feels adolescent losing control so quickly. “Sorry.”
“We’re writing partners, not lovers, don’t sweat it. You’re not the first guy I’ve done who prematurely ejaculated.” She takes a swig of beer.
“No big deal for you, but I feel like an idiot. I never got inside you.”
“So technically you’re still celibate and on the path to Nirvana.”
“You think?”
She nods wisely, sits back and starts to finger herself. “Want to watch me masturbate?”
“What did you call your pussy?”
“Precious.”
“May I have a closer view?”
“Precious loves attention.” Cleo runs her fingers through his hair, taking pleasure in an older man’s cunnilinguistic skills. She comes easily, but it’s a mere warm up. Pete brings her on again, more intensely this time, loving her taste, a mixture of raspberry, lemon and sweat. Again she comes, and again. Her excitement is contagious. Pete is hard in record time. He pauses to appreciate the pulsating landscape spread out before him. She moans when he enters her. This time it’s not over before it begins. Pete knows a few things about making love. He might not be up to celluloid standards, but the connection he makes with Cleo feels real and intimate, and when they finally come, it seems climactic, but doesn’t it always? Afterward, holding her in his arms, he wonders, is she satisfied? Should he ask, could he be certain?
“You’re my first fuck since Carlos,” she says like maybe this actually means something to her.
“I still haven’t kissed you.”
“Next time.” She puts on her boatneck, eager to go to work.
“There won’t be a next time.” Pete leads her upstairs to his office. He turns on a low light.
“Whatever works for you because I don’t need it.” Cleo lies on the chaise, letting Precious breathe.
Pete lights a joint; it’s after midnight. “We need to start with you telling me your story. I want to know everything. Don’t censor, don’t embroider.” He turns on a small digital recorder.
“Where do I begin?”
“Marshalltown, growing up, your family.”
“I almost drowned when I was little, fell in the lake, but I floated. My mother taught sixth grade, and dad sold used cars at the Ford dealership. I grew up in the middle of the Midwest, the perfect place to raise a family. I was a tomboy ’til I started to develop, then I got noticed. High school was the big thing in my town, so was church and Bible study.” She becomes wistful. “I went to the movies every Saturday and after to Lillie May’s candy store. They said Jean worked there before Otto Preminger discovered her in the senior play. I was born the same year she died, 1979, she was my idol. I’m from a family like hers, Swedish origin. We all get together for the holidays, especially July 4
th
and Labor Day, more than one hundred people playing games and having contests.”
“When did you become a bad girl?”
“I was never a bad girl.”
“When did you have your first sexual experience?”
“I was eleven. My older cousin Hank took me fishing. He was fifteen. He asked me to undress for him, but I had nothing to show. Hank said he loved me.”
“Did he touch you?”
“He gave me money.”
“For touching you?”
“He had strong hands, it made me feel good. I loved Hank.”
“Did you touch him?”
“He used to come on my face.”
“You were eleven?”
She shrugs. “We never did anything bad and we never missed Sunday services at church. We both took a vow to abstain from intercourse ’til marriage. He died in a motorcycle accident, still a virgin.”
“Sad story.”
“Boys always looked at me at school. I was popular but nobody ever said I was stuck-up. They say Jean was stuck up, but I don’t believe it. She was very outspoken about civil rights.”
“So you were popular.”
“I was pretty and proud of my body. In high school, my science teacher was mad about me, we did everything but. Was that sinful? Was I possessed by the devil? He said that giving me pleasure gave him pleasure and I felt the same way.”
“What about your vow?”
“I was saving my virginity for my husband. In the meantime, my friend Judy taught me fellatio. Fellatio is probably the best way a girl can keep her virginity in Iowa. I was still a virgin when I started college. I’m no dummy, won an academic scholarship to the University of Iowa. I was going to be an archeologist.”
“Do you still go to church?”
“No, but I believe in God, I never stopped believing in God.”
When their first session ends, Cleo goes back to her unit, taking the pressure off Pete to get it up a third time.
Puffs of clouds blow over the Downing farm
,
a red tail hawk circles in the sky. Pete walks slowly towards the kitchen door, enters the house. He climbs the back stairs to the attic. A girl in a Teflon bikini and stiletto heals waits for him in the hazy light. She’s turned away, arms braced against the wall, heat rising off her body.
The phone jolts Pete awake, it’s eleven; he overslept again. Marcus Bergman, up early. There’s no law that he take the call, so he doesn’t.
He stares at himself in the bathroom mirror. How did the geezer have two orgasms last night? The first was a flashback to uncontrollable teenage lust; the second took him by total surprise and was accompanied by an authentic surge of emotion. And what about her, was she acting? Does it matter? Pete turns on the recorder, sips his coffee and listens to Cleo with increasing fascination.
“I met Roy in my freshman year at the university. I was researching a paper on the collapse of Mayan Civilization. We met in the Library.”
“What was he researching?”
“Me. He had a football scholarship and I had a thing for football players. Two days after we met, it happened. I wasn’t prepared for how I felt about Roy.”
“What about your vow of chastity?”
“I had waited long enough, didn’t want to hold back anymore.”
“What was it like for you?”
“Roy was too big for Precious, nearly split me in two. In the morning we did it again, that’s when I made love for the first time. It was heaven. We were mad about each other. Roy loved to take Polaroid’s, sent some to Playboy. They used me for a ‘Girls Of The Big Ten’ pictorial.”
“Nudes?”
“Sexy. It was a turn on. His pictures did the trick. He was a very good photographer.”
“And in bed?”
“Roy could fuck forever.”
“Without coming?”
“He came a lot. We took breaks, but all I had to do was touch him and he’d be hard again.”
Pete turns off the recorder; he can’t compete with a musclehead ex-football player who fucked and fucked and came and came. For that matter he can’t compete with his younger self and sex had never been a long distance marathon for him anyway.
With Samantha it was about spontaneity. In the morning, he would open his eyes, reach for her and she’d be wet and willing. They were never too tired, distracted or pre-occupied to engage with the other, coming together was easy.
With Heidi, he was convinced she faked orgasm so it would be over sooner, but just in case you might miss it, she was very operatic.
With Barbara it was can you top this? No matter how hard he tried, how inventive he was, when they came, she always wanted one more, one last orgasm, her hand or his. Early on Pete decided he could live with this slight kink.
Last night’s romp with Cleo made Pete realize how much he missed intimate contact with a woman, but she left as if nothing had transpired. Probably nothing had. He turns the recorder back on.
“After Playboy, Roy booked me for the Sports Illustrated Swim Suit Issue. While I cavorted on a beach in Puerto Rico, Roy connected with an Israeli film producer scouting talent for his new production.” Cleo acts out the next part of her story, voicing each character. First, the producer. “Maybe you and girlfriend like to be in my next movie?”
Then Roy. “What kind?”
“Late Night Cable.”
“What do we do?”
“Simulate lovemaking for camera.”
“Fuck in front of other people?”
“We have closed set, everything tasteful, top production values.”
“What does it pay?”
“You give me fifteen minutes to half hour of hot sex, ten thousand dollars.”
Desirée resumes the story. “I was an All American exhibitionist and Roy, who had a body like a Greek God, was a sex machine. I agreed if I could hide my true identity. The producer let me wear a blond wig and lots of stylized makeup.”
Cleo is back. “Desirée and Roy won Best Newcomers at the Adult Film Awards.”
The cell phone rings. Again Pete doesn’t answer and again it rings, and again and again until he turns off the recorder and picks up.
“Please hold for David Stone.”
“Pete, I just got an angry call from your producer, he can’t reach you. Sound familiar?”
“David, why didn’t you tell me your were fucking Barbara?”
“You asked me to take you back as a client, reluctantly I did.”
“You represented me, but it was always her you wanted. Admit it. Be honest for once.”
“Pete, if we slept together before you and she were officially over, she wasn’t cheating because you were gone most of the time.”
“It’s totally unprofessional for an agent to fuck his client’s wife.”
“Stop using those demeaning words.”
“Fuck or wife? You fucked my wife.”
“The truth is I fell in love with Barbara and she fell out of love with you and you didn’t give a shit. But I digress, Marcus Bergman, your producer, has a green light on the series because of the re-write you did, wants you to be the showrunner.”
“Barbara will never love you, David, not like she did me.”
“Putting personal issues aside, the Bergman deal is big. He wants to meet in NY. Make yourself available.” He hangs up.
P
ete leaves the house to clear his head. He should be excited, ecstatic even, but he doesn’t want to be a showrunner for a hit TV Series, he wants to collaborate with Cleo and fuck her whenever she’ll let him.
Jamie’s waiting in the motel office, she needs checks signed. “Our balance is getting low boss.”
“I’m due $35K on the re-write. I’ll put it into the Streamside account soon as I get it. How’s Jackson?”
“I need to find him a lawyer.”
“Let me talk to someone.”
“Whatever it costs I want deducted from my pay.”
A heron balances on stick legs fishing in Tannery Brook. George is on the back deck of his gallery taking pictures of the gangly bird.
“Are you familiar with the work of adult film star, Desirée?” Pete’s voice startles the heron.
George keeps shooting as the bird takes flight, lowers the camera when it is gone. “I wait for that heron every October, she stops on the way to Florida.”
Pete flashes him a Desirée DVD. “I’m doing research on a new project, I thought we might watch this video together.”
“I thought you don’t write anymore.”
“Things change.”
“Don’t I know it, Wendy threw me out.”
“What?”
“She thinks I screwed my intern. I never had sex with that woman.”
“That’s what Clinton said.”
“I agreed with him.”
“A blow job is a blow job, but it wasn’t an impeachable offense.”
“Would you talk to Wendy, point out that Hillary stood by her man?”
“Your wife thinks I’m a bad influence.”
“She’s right, you led me astray with your life is short, when opportunity knocks, open the door, mantra.”
A bell above the door chimes. A customer enters. “Don’t start the video without me.”
“Another time.”
“See you at the opening.”
“I’m having shabbat dinner with Rabbi Stew.”
“You’re an atheist, I need the Hollywood guy to be here. You’re my luminary.”
Under Brother Ray’s tutelage, Pete had been trying to move on to a new sutra. “When the energy of the senses withdraws and the impetus to come into contact with their objects ceases, the senses imitate the essential nature of pure consciousness.” Cleo walked into his life and the impetus to come into contact with another being suddenly returned and the desire for pure consciousness evaporated. But if this new relationship is important then celibacy was actually a cleansing in preparation for a new beginning.
“Hey buddy, can I give you a ride?”
There she is behind the wheel of her rented PT Cruiser, eyes hidden behind shades, wearing the stupid Red Sox cap, sexless LL Beanwear, no makeup, the big gap tooth smile that he loves. “Hi Precious.”
She makes a face. “That’s private. Hop in. I want to buy my writing partner lunch.”
Pete stares at the cap. “Was your friend Kevin Youklis?”
She tosses the cap in the back seat. “Happy?”
He smiles, slides in next to her, runs his fingers through her short hair. “Like Jean’s.”
“My dad knew her, said she fell from grace and committed suicide.”
Pete shakes his head. “She was under surveillance by the FBI because of her involvement with the Black Panthers. The police found her body in the back seat of her car around the corner from where she lived in Paris, eleven days after she went missing. There was a suitcase filled with money, alcohol and pills. Police called it a drug overdose. A lot of people think she was murdered.”
“Desirée almost died with Carlos.”
“How did she manage to get out of there?”
“They were looking for a blond.” She smiles at him.