…or, Rubbing The Wrong Way
Eleven in the morning Sunday, Marlot came knocking on my door. I’d been passed out since about four or so. Little promptings from my next-door neighbor had kept my always fertile imagination going strong long after the point I would normally have been bored with myself.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Marlot said when I opened the door in my boxers and a t-shirt from the floor. “Are you alone?”
“Yeah,” I said, stepping back so she could come in. “Why?”
“I heard you had a visitor last night,” she said, heading to the couch. She flopped down on the end and kicked off her sandals, then pulled her legs up and swung them around across the cushions.
“Oh, yeah. He couldn’t stay,” I said. I squeezed in at the other side of the couch and picked up her foot.
“Why not?”
“He had to get a foot removed from his mouth before he got one in his ass,” I said.
“Kinky,” Marlot said. “Don’t get any ideas about my foot.”
“I won’t,” I said.
I wasn’t a foot person to begin with. I guessed Marlot’s feet would be considered cute, though. They were the only part of her that was petite.
“You should think about painting your toenails,” I said.
“I don’t even paint my fingernails,” she said.
“Well, you do wear a lot of sandals,” I said. “If you’re going to have your toes hanging out all the time, it just makes sense to pretty them up a bit.”
“Are you volunteering for the job?” she said.
“If you get the polish, then yeah, I guess so.”
“Then no,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not paying to have discolored toenails,” she said. “Next, you’re going to want me to use my own money for the fragrant oils to anoint my own forehead.”
“Wouldn’t that just make your hats greasy?”
“My hats are oil resistant,” she said. “Like hummingbirds.”
“Hummingbirds are oil resistant?”
“Have you ever seen an oily hummingbird?”
I chuckled. It was time to ask the question, to raise the topic I’d been avoiding.
“So, uh, how is she?” I asked. “Missy, I mean?”
“She was asleep when I woke up,” Marlot said as I started to massage her sole. “And gone when I got back from the temple.”
“Oh,” I said. “Is she pissed?”
“Well, it was hard to tell if she was sleeping angrily or not, since her face was to the wall. But there was definitely a surly, brooding quality to her absence.”
“Heh.”
“Seriously, Jamie, if you’re that concerned about her feelings, you might have picked a better time to dump her than the middle of the dance.”
“Actually, it was closer to the beginning of the dance,” I said. “And it seemed kinder than waiting until she had a chance to build the whole thing up even more than she already had.”
“So, I guess Iason is next on the chopping block?” Marlot asked.
“Funny,” I said.
“What?” she asked. “You can’t tell me he isn’t getting even further ahead of himself than Missy was.”
“Well, he talks like he thinks I’m going to want to marry him someday, but I think we’re starting to come to an understanding about what I want in the here and now,” I said.
Marlot responded by bending forward to grab my arm by the wrist with Iason’s wooden bracelet stuck on it.
“That was before the understanding,” I said, pulling my arm back and resuming the foot rub.
“Is it because he’s more conventionally attractive than Missy, or because he has a rod of lordly might and she doesn’t?”
“Seriously, Mar, you aren’t funny today.”
“I’m not being funny,” she said. “I know you’re not that into jewelry, so it isn’t that.”
“Yeah, I am more attracted to Iason than Missy,” I said. “Is that a bad reason to stay with him for now?”
“It’s a good enough reason to have sex with someone, I guess,” she said. “As long as you’re being careful.”
“He could turn into a decent guy,” I said. “If he grows up a little.”
“He’s twelve years older than us,” Marlot said.
“There are probably thirty-year-old humans who are that childish,” I said.
“Seriously, Jamie. Don’t hang your hopes on the idea that you can change him.”
“I’m not,” I said. “But he’s got time to change himself. If not, the sex is still good.”
“How long you going to give him?”
“Well, I’m going to graduate sooner or later,” I said.
“Did you ever give Missy a foot massage?” Marlot asked, leaning back and closing her eyes as I worked her toes between my finger and thumb.
“No, Iason gave me a back rub, but Missy is kind of a down-to-business kind of girl,” I said.
“She doesn’t know what she’s missing,” Marlot said. “On several scores.”
“What?” I asked, dropping her foot.
“Hey, don’t stop,” she said, wiggling her toes.
“What did you mean, though?” I asked, resuming the foot rub.
“We were talking about foreplay and stuff,” Marlot said. “And I asked her how you were at oral.”
“Why would you do that?” I asked, dropping her foot again.
“It’s girl talk,” she said. “And quit that. Anyway, do you know what she said to me?”
“Do I want to know?”
“Do I actually care?” Marlot said. “She said, ‘Nice girls don’t do that.’ And I clarified that I meant you going down on her, not the other way around—though it would be bullshit either way—and she said it didn’t matter. ‘Nice girls don’t do that.’ Can you believe that?”
“Well,” I said. “Different strokes for different folks, right?”
Marlot snerked.
“You know, that’s why she has so many toys, too,” she said.
“Because she likes different strokes?”
“Because she doesn’t believe girls should masturbate,” Marlot said.
“Isn’t that like owning a closet full of daggers because you don’t approve of stabbing?”
“I think it’s more like owning a closet full of daggers because you don’t approve of fistfights,” she said. “She sees a distinction there, somehow.”
“So, do girls actually like that?” I said.
“Daggers? We’re crazy about them.”
“No,” I said. “The whole, uh, oral thing. You actually let guys do that?”
“We put up with it, somehow, yes,” Marlot said.
“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “I thought it might just be something that turns guys on, you know, getting in close like that. Most of what I know about sex with girls is from porn, and I don’t want to just assume that’s an accurate representation of female sexuality.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” Marlot said. “The best thing to do is probably to ask a girl what she’s into.”
“What, just work it into conversation?”
“Well, how do you approach a guy?”
“Iason approached me,” I said. “Before that, mostly, I’d just go up and ask if I could suck their dick. Somehow, I don’t think that line would work on most girls.”
“Might get you some points for originality,” Marlot said.
“Might,” I said.
“The best thing to do is play to your strengths and look for cues from her, though,” Marlot said.
“Play to my strengths how?”
“Like what you’re doing now,” Marlot said.
I looked down at her foot in my hands and froze.
“What?” she asked.
“This is good foreplay?”
“It might be good foreplay if it was foreplay,” she said. “I mean, it could be a good lead-in to actual foreplay, if that’s where you were going. With another girl. Who’s not me.”
I cleared my throat and put her foot down.
“Hey, you didn’t finish,” she said.
“My hand is cramping,” I lied.
“Well, give it here.”
“No, thanks,” I said. I got to my feet, grabbed my jeans, and pulled them on. “You want some pudding? My mom sent me a bunch more.”
“Come on, let me give you a hand massage,” she said. “We always take turns. Quad pro tat. Tit for pro. All that stuff.”
“I’ll take a rain check on it,” I said.
“I was just trying to give you some tips,” she said. “I hope I haven’t talked my way out of any future massages.”
“No,” I said. “Let’s just not talk about sex during the next one.”
“Okay,” she said. “I hope you know the only reason I put up with you is those clever elven fingers.”
“Seriously, Mar, this is the wrong time to joke about that.”
“But you know I’m joking.”
“I know.”
“Pudding?” she prompted.
“Chocolate or vanilla?” I asked. The opposite wall was full of cubbyholes, mostly stuffed with snack foods.
“Surprise me,” Marlot said. I tossed her a cup of applesauce. “Surprise me less,” she said, tossing it back. I grabbed a pack of vanilla pudding cups and a couple of plastic spoons, and carried them back to the couch.
“Here you go,” I said, holding out a spoon and a pudding cup.
“Aren’t you going to open it for me?” she asked, taking the spoon.
“Do you want to smell the foil, too?” I asked, peeling the wrapper off for her and then handing it to her.
“You don’t actually smell the foil,” she said. “You inspect it to make sure the pudding has been stored properly on its side. So, are we planning on hiding in your room all day?”
“It seems like a good idea to give Missy some space for a couple of days,” I said.
“You guys weren’t together that long.”
“No, and hopefully she’ll realize that and not make it into a whole big thing,” I said.
“So what exactly was the tipping point, for you?”
“No one thing,” I think. “She wasn’t listening to me. She was fetishizing my relationship with Iason. She was kind of a bitch about a few things.”
“Oh, yeah. Did you notice that the only time she actually swears is when she’s complaining about minorities?” Marlot asked. “She could be like, ‘Oh my kosh, I accidentally cut off my toe!’ and then, ‘They let Arkhanites use the drinking fountains? That’s bullshit!’”
“She isn’t that bad.”
“The biggest difference between her and Juliana is that Missy’s interest in your winkie was benign,” Marlot said.
“She’s your roommate,” I said.
“Yeah, and I get along with her well enough to occasionally hang out with and be unconscious in the same space as her,” Marlot said. “But I wouldn’t date her.”
“Well, all sorts of reasons for that,” I said.
“Just you wait,” she said. “I’m getting gayer by the day. I’m already starting to question the assumptions of my meaningless small town existence. By mid-week I will dye my hair green. Two days later, I will shave it off.”
“Seems like a waste of dye,” I said.
“No, I can use the green hair in a collage celebrating the bounty of nature,” she said.
“Did you really go to temple services this morning?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You didn’t go last week,” I said.
“That’s why I made sure to get up bright and early this week,” she said.
“Are you going to go next Sunday, too?”
“Did you want to come with me?”
“Um, no,” I said. “I’m just wondering where this came from.”
“This isn’t something new I just started doing,” she said. “We’ve been going to the Universal Temple all our lives, Jamie.”
“Yeah, but, we’re on our own now,” I said. “We can make our own choices.”
“Well, I choose to keep going,” she said. “At least some of the time.”
“Okay,” I said. “It’s just kind of surprising, that’s all. You want to come downstairs with me?”
“Smoking?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“No, thanks.”
“Okay, see you in a bit, then.”
I hung a left out my door and went all the way to the corner instead of cutting through the lounge , heading down the boys’ hallways all the way to the stairwell. I got outside to the smoking area just as Violet was lighting up one of her herbal joints. She looked a little out of breath.
“Hey,” she said, looking at me kind of sideways.
“You can come hang out in my room if you want,” I said.
“No, thanks,” she said.
“Okay,” I said. “The offer stands, though. I guess you can tell when I’m in and feel like company.”
“Yeah, I guess I can,” she said.
A couple of guys lit up as they came outside. They started towards us, then skidded to a halt and kind of turned away, going to stand by the other ashtray at the other end of the pavement.
“Oh, yeah. Missy’s been telling stories about you,” Violet said.
“What kind of stories?”
“Something about her dumping you for being a faggot,” she said.
“Nice,” I said.
“You do spend an awful lot of time thinking about the cock.”
“That’s not all I think of,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “But honestly, you come off about seventy-thirty, to me.”
“Seventy percent gay?”
“About,” she said. “Maybe eighty. I might have queered the results a little, so to speak, by interfering last night.”
“I would have thought about girls eventually,” I said.
“Sure,” she said. She took a drag and blew a puff of sweet-smelling smoke at me out of the corner of her mouth. “Who was that guy, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Saw him at the dance.”
“Gay?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Your imagination seemed to be awfully generous to him,” Violet said.
“So are you Temperance or Beth?” I asked.
“I’m Violet.”
“I think I would remember somebody introducing themselves as Temperance on the first day,” I said.
“So you think that’s me,” she said.
“I don’t know.”
She was keeping her face half-turned away from me. She wasn’t the hottest girl on the floor—that was Iolana, hands down—but there was something about her that went beyond looks.
“So, you’ve still got a hard-on for Lonnie,” she said.
“She seems nice,” I said.
“I wasn’t sure,” she said. “You didn’t bring her up at all last night.”
I shrugged.
“It seemed like it would be rude,” I said.
She sent me a sound like tiny bells ringing.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“I like the way you think, but that doesn’t mean we’re going steady,” she said. “It isn’t like you’re the only one I can hear from my room.”
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, I guess not.”
“But you are the only guy,” she said. “And you’re among the more interesting minds I’ve ever overlapped, at least when you’re grappling with the purple worm.”
“You know, I don’t usually talk about my personal habits with girls like this.”
“We don’t have to talk about it,” she said. “It isn’t a big deal to me, though.”
“You don’t worry about people’s privacy?” I asked.
“I’m not going to go around telling other people what you think about,” she said. “I’m not going to tell Lonnie how you feel about her, or tell you if she thinks something about you. Talking to you about your fantasies isn’t expanding the circle of people who know about them, so your privacy is intact.”
“Except for the fact that you had to invade it in the first place,” I said.
“Who’s invading?” she asked. “If I don’t mind other peoples’ thoughts poking through my head, I don’t see why they should mind.”
“That’s a weird way of looking at it.”
“I suppose you’re the expert on telepathy,” she said.
“So, uh, you liked what you saw last night?”
“I had a time,” she said. “Several of them. But don’t get cocky. I might pop in again, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to buy you a ring or anything.”
“That’s fine,” I said. Honestly, it was nice to have somebody kind of interested in me who wasn’t interested in picking out floral arrangements.
“I figured it would be,” she said. “I’m more of a ’sit back and watch’ type, anyway.”
“So, you’re a voyeur,” I said.
“Given that I’ve spent my whole life being bombarded with other people’s wet dreams and sexual fantasies, it seems like a viable choice,” she said. “Well, you know, it was either that or go nucking futs. I think I made the right call.”
“I think you did, too.”
