Barbarella on Tilt v. 3 (work in progress)

Y si quieren saber de mi pasado,
Es preciso decir otra mentira,
Les diré que llegué de un mundo raro,
Que no sé del dolor
Que triunfé en el amor
Y que nunca he llorrado -José Alfredo Jiménez





"I could rape you," he said the night before.

"That impossible, I want you inside me."

I moved to San Francisco to start a life.

"You couldn't stop me."

I moved to San Francisco to find a career.

"I don't want you to stop."

I went to Frisco to find me some love.

"Do you want me to rape you?"

"I want you to shut up and fuck me is what I want."

And he did, we did it together. But in Frisco even the impossible is possible; in Frisco, anything can happen, anything. The next morning, I wake up spooning, my body forming the inside of the arc. I stretch, smiling flirtatiously even though he can't see my face. Instantly, he moves his leg so it is on top of the two mine. He holds me tighter and grumbles. I kiss his linked hands and close my eyes for a few minutes longer. He is warm, outside the rain has stopped but it is cold. I hold kiss his hands and, "I hate that I have to go to work, but I have to go." I try and get up. His arms and leg will not budge. I smile and roll my eyes at once. I try again and am irritated by having to do it a third.

“Dude, stop, I have to get to work.” He moans sheepishly and holds me tighter.  

“I’m not kidding, you are going to make me late.” I fail again. 

“Dude, I’m not kidding.” I can barely whisper "please" as his arms constrict, muscles flaring, the same ones the night before I had asked him to flex, the ones I had challenged to armwrestle. I grimace as they constrict harder, but obviously no where their limit. I hold still. I show him who is boss. He releases a bit. With a sheepish, sleepy laugh he numbs my mind and stabs my heart, rolling me on my back and himself over and on top. "That's...you planned this shit?" He looks into my eyes for a second or two, holds us still. In the morning light, it is clear that he might be handsome, but I have the upper hand. I feel him thicken as his left hand stretches both my arms up over my head, my two wrists in a single grip. I close my eyes and look away and look; he rubs his mouth on my upturned chin, rasping it with his teeth. He feels my next struggle, and I'm not sure I did more than think about struggling, and lunges at my neck, not kissing, not biting, just rubbing his mouth hard, breathing heavy and licking my face and neck--ravenous for meat. I recognize that I am in danger, and it isn't his hunger that tips me off; it's that he had sworn off the stuff until now.

I remember he covered my mouth and nose with a single hand. I remember barely being able to breathe. I remember knowing it would hurt less if I just let him do it. I remember clenching as hard as I possibly could as he forced his dick, deep, deep, into my ass; and I remember the cold weight of a single, viscous tear, that fell from the corner of my eye when he finished. And I remember how he rolled off me unceremoniously. Rolled like he had done me a favor. Like pumping me full of his excitement, his vitriol, had been a chore. I got up quickly. I felt like I was overreacting. Even now, I remember it as overreacting. He lay there with his mouth partially open, and his lids heavy. I looked at him in disbelief when he snored, trapping what remained of me. I panicked, I rushed and I fumbled. I left my ring and my sweater. The part of me that could run, left the rest. "Leave her! She's too slow!" I scrambled out into the morning, and the fog--hippocampus off kilter, me, a cyborg manifesto on the skids. Later that day, walking through Deboce Park, on my way to lunch, I saw him sunbathing on a towel in the early spring sun. Sunbathing. I put my head down. I walked by quickly. He and his tan, took their time.

I meet my first boyfriend at a bar. The relationship lasts six weeks. He is a Mexican gym boy and a bottom. We don't have sex, because he doesn't want to have sex with me. He doesn't say say that to me, but I know. I'm not six foot two, muscled and white. I don't drive a jeep, or own the dog du jur. No Beauty. No Britney. No Butch. I'm not straight acting. Every time we get back to his place after going on a date, Jaimie undresses and dives into bed, and under the covers, fast. It's the end of July, and he keeps the apartment cold.

"Jesus, remind me to bring a sweater."

"I'll keep you warm under the covers."

"I prefer my chances with a parka."

I do not accuse him of not wanting to touch me, of his hang ups, and how he hangs them all up on me. Complain about the lack of sex--I cannot say enough about that to him, about the need to go at it like rabbits if he expects me to stay.

"I don't mind if you jack off." Jaime stares at me expectantly. We had never really kissed since we started dating. The first night at the Rage, sure, slobbered. Since then, pecked, maybe, his lips always preemptively shut.

Masturbating for a man I was dating who wouldn't even slop me some tongue. What does that even mean? I wasn't sure what to do. No adult ever pulled me aside at the appropriate time and told me there would come a time when a man you haven't even kissed will have the nerve to ask you to pleasure yourself in front of him. I put my hand down my pants, but then stop, pull my hand out, not because I'm prudish, but because I always win.

"You don't think it's sexy to have me watch?"

"Not unless you're telekinetic." I slip into bed.

"What?"

Sigh. "You wouldn't touch me either way." I keep my shirt on and spare myself the agony of feeling his warm smooth skin all night. I spare myself the all night erection.

****

I meet my rapist at a bar. "My". He's my rapist. Just like someone could be my murderer. My kidnapper. My Priest. My lover.

“Where are you from?"

“Idaho.”

“Boise?”

“No. North.”

“I drove through it once, it was pretty.”

“I grew up on a farm. You've probably never been on one."

"Only once, my grandfather's farm in Arkansas."

We kiss in-between sentences. We kiss a lot, and for hours, Adolescents at a drive in, our conversation is interstitial, between the lines.

"I won two ribbons at the county fair for wrestling a pig.”

"I saw three cholas beat down some bitches with socks filled with quarters at the L.A. County Fair."

“They're are hard to wrestle."

"Cholas?"

"Pigs!"

"No one has ever told me they wrestled pigs before."

He looks me up and down, smiles and brings his face close to mine, “you could never do it. City boy!”

His breath smells like fruit, bubblegum. He kisses me softly, sticky, and sweet with sugar. He pauses, and looks into my eyes, which I keep open the entire time. He smiles a bit, just a hint, then pulls me close to him with both arms, in a grand, staid hug. I hug him back and I can hear his heart beating; my ear resting on his chest. He makes the sort of noise you make when you don't want to let someone go, the same noise you make when you hug someone who doesn't yet know you are guilty. He squeezes me tightest when the noise is at its peak. I don't know what it means in this context. I know I want it to mean that he likes me. Really. Really. Likes me. We continue to kiss all night. Sometimes gentle, sometimes hard and deep. We don't dance much. He can't keep up and gets uncomfortable when I dumb it down for him. So we kiss. We are the only one's left in the bar. I sit up on a railing that surrounds the dance floor. It erases the height difference. My ring slips off, the cold of the night and iced drinks having made my knuckle get small.

"Shit, hold up, my ring." I slide off the rail and start groping for the ring, trying to use the disco lights to my advantage. The floor is black, uneven, and unfinished, like tar.

"Hurry up....did you lose your tiara too?"

I flick on my lighter.

"Got it." I stand up and put my ring back on. Teetering back a step, "sarcasm is so not sexy." I can't keep myself from smiling. I grin big.

He reaches fast and pulls me towards him by my wrists. He tilts his head on the approach, "God, you are so fucking cute." Another kiss.

"Now, that's the shit that will get you anywhere."

And outside, it begins to pour.

*******

Jaime asks me for a massage. Again. He sucks at giving massages, and so I don't want them. He lays flat on his stomach. I straddle him and start to knead his back.

"Do I look like a masseuse?"

"Don't be a bitch."

"I is, what I is."

"Why would you admit you're a bitch?"

Because then you cannot tell me to stop acting like one. He won't get it, so I say nothing.

"But no one likes a bitch."

I pull my ring off and set it on the nightstand, "shut up, already."

I knead Jaimie's hard back, until my hands hurt. He starts to snore. I stop, sitting on top of him while he sleeps, staring at my ring, and then at myself in the mirror above his bed. I lose that ring the morning I am raped. That ring and a mustard yellow Dolce Gabbana mohair wool cardigan; it has two silver dollar size plastic yellow buttons and is cut short, just above my waist. It is my first Dolce Gabbana anything. I find the cardigan at Last Call, marked down to eighty bucks from six hundred. The color catches my eye from the bottom of a heap on a clearance table; it calls out to me from underneath a Miranda Priestly "pile of stuff."

For five years, I am that cardigan and that ring. Everyone knows they are mine; in that yellow, everyone sees me coming. It is the ring and the cardigan that my best and closest female friends put on whenever we hang out, the ultimate female gesture--wearing your best friend's clothes. I, in turn, borrow their wedges, if they are misfortunate enough to have big enough feet. That morning I forget them. I scramble for shoes. I leave the socks. I manage my keys and my wallet, but only because they are already in my jeans. I do not put on underwear, but hold them in my hand. A pair of boxer briefs. Black. I knock over a glass of water as I rush and he yells, "Goddammit!" I wipe up the water with my underwear and run out the door. Like a good little bitch.

A couple of weeks later, I ring what I think is his gate buzzer. A friend brings me, a female. My male friends, and my mother, have never been much inclined to talk about any of this. They listen and recite platitudes from the surface, and the boys and my mother can't dive into the mire. So a woman brings me to get my things. I ring the buzzer one or two or three times. No one answers. I look up at the brick facade and wonder if he is in there, if he is looking. I wonder if he even knows what he has done. Strike that, I didn't even know what he had done. It isn't until I was telling my friend, Tammy, one night at the Cafe about the weird end to my date, when she grabbed my wrist, just grabbed it, right there in front of the Barbarella pin ball machine, and said it. She just said it.

"Eric, you were raped."

She lets go. I take a long drag.

"Yeah, huh?"

Huh. Did he keep my ring and sweater? Did he wear them? Did he give them away or did he throw them in the trash, like he would have gotten rid of a body? Barbarella starts to buzz. Tammy and I turn and face a lit up, flashing, celluloid Ms. Fonda, all hair, gold sheer fabric, and knee high boots. Her belt blinks, "tilt." Tammy throws her arms around me and gives me a huge, firm, fat person's hug, despite her small frame. In that embrace, I feel still, for one merciful second.