AFTER WE DID IT that time it was like I was on drugs. I had to have it. I thought about her every minute. They could make one of those fucking TV ads about me. This is your brain. This is your brain after you’ve had sex.
I’d wake up with a boner, same as always, only instead of stopping there, it kept happening all day long.
I’d be combing my hair and I’d remember how it felt, her fingers in my hair, and I’d start shaking. I’d hear “Home Sweet Home” on the radio, that was playing when she gave me a ride in her car, and all of a sudden I’d be sweating like a pig. I’d pick up the phone to dial her number, hang up, pick up the phone again, start to dial. Hang up. I knew I wasn’t supposed to do that, but it was like my dick was on fire and the only thing that would give me any relief was hearing her voice. Just walking down the street I’d think, man, everybody must know what’s on my mind. I read someplace there’s this disease where you have a hard-on that never stops. That was me.
I still don’t get it, how there can be this feeling that’s so good that when you don’t have it, it feels worse than anything you ever felt before. My balls ached. I felt like I was going to throw up. I’d open my mouth to say something, and my voice would crack like some fucking seventh grader.
All day long I’d wait for the moment when I’d get to see her. But when I got to see her, that was even worse. Seeing her and not getting in her pants, you know? Seeing those perfect smooth hands of hers, with those red fingernails, and remembering how they’d dug into my back. I’d remember seeing them pressed into my skin. I could never understand how she did it, acting so calm and cool when I saw her at her condo or Pizza Hut, knowing what she was like in the backseat of her car when it was just her and me fucking. Hearing her clear her throat, that way she always did, and remembering how she’d scream when I was on top of her. Her hair pulled back in that little ponytail, and it used to be hanging all loose over my chest. Her bra straps just barely showing through her blouse. Her nipples making these two little stick-out places when she wore a certain kind of shirt. How could people keep acting normal around that kind of thing? Didn’t everybody see? Was it just me?
Sometimes I’d wait for her out by her car. Lean on her hood, light up a stink butt, then another. There’d be a whole pile of them on the ground all around me by the time she showed up. I’d try and act casual, like I just happened to drop by, but my leg would be shaking.
“So,” I’d say. “You got any plans? You want to take a drive?”
Meaning in her car, of course. The whole thing being out of my control. Her car. Her house. It was like I was her puppet. It was all up to her, and whatever she said went.
She’d laugh. She always laughed, this way she had, where the sound of laughing came out, without her face looking she was laughing. “What am I going to do with you, Jimmy?” she’d say.
What did she think? “Fuck me, I hope,” I wanted to scream at her. “Put me out of my misery, like some dog that’s got rabies.” Which was about as messed up as I felt most of the time.
Then she’d reach up—she was so small and delicate, she only came up to my nose, maybe—and brush my hair out of my eyes, like something a mother might do, only not my mother. “You are such a silly boy,” she’d say. Alls I could do was stand there.
She always had a million places to go. “Hmm …” she’d say. “I haven’t been to aerobics in two days. I’m getting so fat it’s disgusting.”
I told her I’d wait for her if she wanted. I didn’t have plans at the moment. Or any other moment, if you want to know the truth.
“But …” she’d say. “We don’t have a thing for dinner back home. I really should go to the store. Larry’ll kill me if I ask him to bring home pizza again. God, what’ll I make?”
What was I supposed to say to that one? I know some great recipes?
“I was thinking maybe we could drive out Langley Road,” I said. “Out past the trailer park.”
Then she’d laugh again. “Now why would I do a thing like that?” she’d say. And then just when I thought I’d have to beat my head against the side of her car, she’d open her door and tell me to get in the other side. Then she’d gun the motor and turn on the radio, not even looking at me. Look at her hair in the mirror. Check this list she kept on the dashboard that told her all the errands she needed to do. Pick up his shirts at the cleaners and shit. “I have thirty-five minutes,” she’d say. She had a little timer on her watch that set off a beep when the time was up.
But thirty-five minutes was enough for me. I was always ready. Only problem I had was holding it in that long. And then knowing once it was over I’d have to wait a whole day or maybe two before I got it again. Because the minute she dropped me off at the Sunoco station back in town, even before her car disappeared at the stoplight, I could feel it starting again. That same feeling of needing it. The more you had the more you needed. Whatever you got it was never enough.