An introspective Joe-centric character study, with a healthy smattering of my own Joe headcannon thrown in for good measure.
This is my first attempt at a HACF fic – so please, please PLEASE let me know what you think of it! It has been a labor of love, my friends; and an absolute bear: because Joe is a voraciously demanding, exacting, and totally insufferably inscrutable prick of a muse to write for…but once he gets his claws into you, he hangs on and doesn't let go.
Hope you enjoy! Be mindful of the trigger warnings – which seem to cover just about everything in the book, this time. Blame Joe, not me: it's not my fault he can be such a dark character!
*Trigger warnings: extremely vulgar/coarse language, McCarthyism, homophobic slurs/homophobia, antisemitism, bullying/body shaming, underage sex, attempted sodomy/rape, graphic depictions of violence, referenced suicide, referenced drug use/abuse*
You've known for a long time that you're different – that your brain doesn't function, doesn't travel, in the same circles as everybody else's.
You first start noticing it when you're nine in 1957, when Sputnik 1 is launched while the whole of the Western world is caught in the thrall of the Red Scare and all you can think is, we've done it; we've put something in space – next they'll be sending people up there. And the thoughts scare you in an exciting, thrilling way, leave you breathless with awe; because this is terrifying and beautiful and amazing…but everyone around you just seems to get stuck at 'terrifying' because it's been the damn commie Ruskies who've done it first.
(You have a split second – an eternity – to understand their terror the night your foot slips and you fall three stories to hit the picket fence in your own front yard, and you see more stars than you ever did up on the roof. Two years and a blur of countless surgeries later, you learn all the king's horses and all the king's men really can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again – at least, not good as new.)
By next year all the kids at school seem to have forgotten all about it – as if it never happened – and all they care about is the stupid Colts vs. Giants game; which you don't understand at all, because who could possibly care about that when mankind is starting to explore that last and wildest frontier, unlocking the door to the secrets of the universe? And you try to explain, try to make them understand your unbridled passion, your aching thirst for the knowledge and greatness that is surely to come – but you're the crazy kid, the freak who spends more time taking trips to and from the hospital than sitting in a classroom; and you just get told to shut up or get stuffed, your classmates calling you 'Joe MacStalin' behind your back, and suddenly your teachers want to know if everything's alright at home.
Nobody'd ever warned you that these were feelings you were supposed to be ashamed of.
You learn.
(Mom would have understood – she recognized the wonder of discovery – but she's not here, anymore.)
The knowing deepens when you turn twelve and now the girls lose their cooties…but for you – only for you – the boys do, too.
It solidifies like instant cement when you're fifteen and Philip Grünwald – Phil Greenwood, he calls himself – moves to your school. Skinny, brown-eyed, Jewish Phil, who understands calculus and derivatives and integrals and all the garbled mathematical incomprehensibilities that drive your marks down and your mind crazy…but can't do English. So, you tutor each other on the buddy system – and, as linear algebra starts to finally move in straight lines and Phil grasps the difference between a metaphor and a simile, you lose track of just when the guiding of pencil-gripping hands, the accidental brushing of arms and legs as the two of you sit side by side become something more.
Not that you care, when you and Phil are jammed, packed like sardines, in a cramped stall of the boys' bathroom with your breath coming in fast pants and your heart pounding in your throat and you're both too tall and too long for this to be comfortable – and Phil leans in toward you, and you toward him, until…your lips meet, are on someone else's, for the very first time.
This feeling – it's unlike any you've had before, as your mouths slot together and your hands go to his shoulders as his go to your waist. Phil is angular, knobby and sharp under your questing fingers; but the shape of his bones and skin fits into your cupped palms perfectly, like matching puzzle pieces, the same as the jut of your hips curves just right beneath the creases of his knuckles. And it grows, like a live thing pulsing through your blood, insatiable and wanting, until the necessity of clothes is an unwanted restriction and the two of you are pressed, smashed, grinding together like you're trying to graft skin to sweaty skin; until wandering hands drift south and Phil's fingers apply just the right pressure as he squeezes and –
Oh. Oh!
You must be flying, shooting past the stars on golden wings, even as the air punches out of your lungs and your knees buckle and you scramble, fumbling, to reciprocate; and both of you are throwing off sparks as you chart a course, a madly spinning trajectory, through a heretofore unknown territory of sheer bliss. Phil and you crash-land together on the same foreign planet, sticky and sated and jelly-legged as you get used to gravity again – and you know the stupefied marvel in his dark, blown-out pupiled eyes mirrors that in your own.
You feel like an explorer, a pioneer – and you think, is this what they were looking for, those men who built that spacecraft? It must be, for you've finally found an outlet for the burn you've been living with since you first learned to talk in full sentences. And you can't help but laugh from the joy of it, laugh until Phil's laughing, too, with you; until tears are running down both your faces – because you've learned that discoveries are most wondrous when they are shared.
(After that day, you can't ever get enough. You know you'll spend the rest of your life chasing the high.)
You're sure, if you weren't already, that Phil's right for you the afternoon gym class is over – and thank God or whoever that it's the last one of the day…because the excuse of changing makes this so much easier and more delicious when hands can just slip under unbuttoned shirts so your nails can scratch all up and down Phil's back as his teasing fingers pinch your aching nipples raw – and he finds those jagged, ripped-up lines scoring your chest. You know, because his eyes are only questioning – not pitying, or full of revulsion, as everyone else's are – and he doesn't stare, lets you get away with a muttered, "Later," because the scars are the very last thing you'd want to be thinking about right now…or ever, really, as you move to shove your tongue down his throat –
And then it all goes spectacularly straight to hell in burning flames.
Flames in the form of three senior track team stars; all of whom have two years, a few inches, and several pounds on you both. The two of you must have been making some kind of noise without realizing it, because it's unerringly your door they kick in – so fast there's no time for dissembling – to find you with your hands stuck down the front of Phil's briefs while his are down the back of your gym shorts, both of you with sweat-soaked hair plastered to your foreheads, half in and half out of your shirts; rooted to the spot like a pair of deer caught in headlights.
The three of them drag you, tripping over your own feet in paralyzed shock, out of the cubicle; hustle, herd you into the showers, out of sight of the changeroom door. One pins you in place by the arms while Phil struggles against another as the third says, "So; this is what the bookworms get up to in their free time," and the whole time he's looking at you – at your scars – like you're a particularly ugly species of exotic insect. "Whaddaya know; it's a walking freak show!" You feel something unexpectedly dangerous crackle amongst the fear sparking in your gut.
He steps in close, so close you can smell that cheap cologne all the sporty types think makes them seem macho; whispers, "You like sucking on the kike's cock; huh, faggot?" and when you don't answer his hand shoots down between your legs and grabs until you roar in humiliated agony and a "Yes" is forced out from between your clenched teeth. Distantly, you hear Phil cry out from somewhere beside you.
A corner of your mind can't help but find it funny, how it's not even a lie – by this point, both of you have given and gotten head…and loved it.
"Why don't you show us," he says as you gasp for breath, "go on; lick his dick for us and we'll let you go. Or," he continues, sniggering, "maybe you'd like to lick mine. My buddies might be choosy about which mouth they'll use…but, not me."
For a crazy half-second you actually entertain the idea of taking him up on it, if you could be sure it'd mean your freedom…but, of course, you can't; and Phil's sobbing now and so you set your jaw and shake your head, sharply. "No, thanks."
"Well, now; that's too bad." The Jock, as you've named him in your head, pouts in mock disappointment. "Luckily, though, I know something fags like even more than they like to suck." He smiles – a cold, sadistic thing that makes your skin crawl. "They like to fuck." You watch him savor the filthiness of the word, his friends snickering at the casual vulgarity. "That's true, isn't it? Bet you've done that, too; haven't you – and loved it." You haven't, actually, though that's clearly irrelevant. "Let me hear you say it: 'fags like to suck, but they love to fuck'," he taunts, singsonging the crude rhyme so as to emphasize 'love'; and you try to tune out Phil's stammering, "F-fags…l-like…t-to…"
"That's good; because we've got a little surprise for you two queer lovebirds, haven't we?" Jock disappears for a minute around the corner; comes back. "Lookie here." And your blood turns to ice-water as he holds up a broom handle, no doubt expropriated from the custodian's closet down the hall.
You stare at the smooth, worn-polished wood of the pole in disbelief. You've heard of hazing rituals like this, but you'd never – You gnaw desperately on your lower lip to hold in a whimper, bite hard enough to draw blood and taste salt and pennies on your tongue. Dimly, you hear Jock and his lackeys cackle in sick glee as Phil suddenly lets loose his terror in a flood all over the floor's cracked tiles.
"We're gonna see how much you love it," Jock says, brandishing the handle; he's staring right into your eyes so you can't look away, like a mouse hypnotized by the gaze of a snake. "Think it'll fit?" say the arms gripping you, and you have to fight the urge to spew your guts out over your own shoes. You can feel yourself shaking like a leaf. "Sure, it will; all fags are real loose, don't you know that?" "How many inches you guessin' he'll take?" asks Phil's captor, and you hear Phil moan like a dying man.
"I don't know." Jock's still looking right at you – or, no, through you – sounding like he's figuring on it. He shrugs, nonchalant; a maniacal gleam in his eye. "Guess we'll find out."
"Hold him down," he orders; and you tense, straining with all your strength as the muscle holding you tries to wrestle you to the ground – And that's when the last thread of Phil's sanity snaps as he can't take any more. Tearing himself free in a panic-fueled burst of strength, he makes a break for it. The broom handle swings up, comes down across the back of his head in a dull whack – and Phil drops to the tiled floor like a stone.
He does not rise. The vise locking your arms to your sides loosens as the remaining four of you, uncomprehending, freeze for a second; staring.
And now something in you snaps. Inarticulate, screaming, you launch yourself at the three boys, arms flailing and fists flying; you get in one good hit and hear the crunch of bone. Your knuckles throb mercilessly; you're not sure if the blood you see is your own until one of them reels back, hand to a crooked, streaming nose.
"You broke my… You little fucker – " And then they're on you, all three at once; and you feel yourself borne to earth, kicking and punching like a demon all the way. You're unaware of any pain as you scratch, claw, and bite for your life – but you can hear the spitting and the jeers of freak and fag and queer and cocksucking motherfucker ringing in your ears like the clang of an enormous bell; feel their hands on your skin, your hair, ripping at your clothes, the stifling hot, sweaty press of their bodies contrasting the cool hardness of the broom handle's wood against your bare inner thigh – You can't breathe, you're going to go mad; you can hear somebody shrieking in tight, animal yips of fear and only the stinging of your raw throat tells you the cries are yours –
And then, from nowhere, you hear the shouts of adult voices – and large, grown-up hands are tearing the seething mass of your tangled limbs apart. You find yourself lying on the floor of the gym's showers, bloodied and trembling; your shirt torn and gaping open, your shorts dragged halfway down to your knees and the fly of your boxers unzipped. To your acute embarrassment, you feel the sticky wetness of tear tracks on your cheeks. A huddled cluster of teachers is looking – no, staring – down at you in faintly horrified concern, and you know they're seeing your scars and your half-nakedness and your tears and your skin crawls again; you pull your shirt closed and hitch your shorts up jerkily, your arms, legs, and body automatically curling inward.
Someone – you're not focused on who – offers you a hand, and you take it unsteadily. The climb to your feet is snails-pace slow, excruciating…but your bruised knees hold your weight once you're up. Jock and his buddies are corralled by the wall, looking as worse for the wear as you feel. And Phil: Phil's standing – or being held up – wet patch spreading across the front of his briefs, pale, hand on the back of his neck…and all you feel in that single moment is dizzying, profound relief.
The person whose hand you realize you're still clinging to is Mr. Parsons, who you have for history. He's patting you down discretely, searching for any injuries beyond the obvious cuts and bruises; which puts you in mind, bizarrely, of a police frisking. "My God," he murmurs, "are you alright, boy?"
" 'M fine," you manage, though your chest's on fire and your ribs creak with every breath. Momentarily satisfied, he steps away from you; the set of his thin lips and the rims of his nostrils are white with fury. He's livid. "Somebody want to tell me what's going on here?" he clips out, and before anyone can answer, he bellows:
"What in the blue fuck was that?!"
You actually flinch before you can stop yourself; you've never heard a teacher swear, before. "Rob, calm down," a woman's voice pleads – but Jock's been jolted from silence by pure astonishment, and he bursts out:
"They started it!" And as all heads turn to him, he bulls his way through, "MacMillan and Greenwood, sir; they've been having…unnatural relations." You can hear the silent sneer of faggot in his voice as he speaks. "Simmonds, Polk, and I caught them at it."
"Don't start trying to feed me excuses, Waller; because I don't want to hear them! Nearly beating one student unconscious; assaulting a second with a broom handle – The principal and your parents will be hearing about this incident directly. I suggest you and your gentleman friends think critically about your futures – for you no longer have one at this school. Count yourselves lucky if you can stay out of juvenile court. Barbara, Dave – if you would…" And, just like that, your three tormentors are gone; marching down to the office with their escort. You feel the adrenaline begin to seep from your body, leaving you shaky and weak – and you barely make it to the toilet in one of the stalls before you're retching miserably, throwing up everything you ate for lunch today.
When you stumble back, the history teacher's probing, prodding at Phil's head while he winces. "You've got a nice goose egg, there – take at least a week to go down. But it looks like you'll both live. Hush, boy; don't be embarrassed, just change your pants. It's okay." But then Parsons turns, and you know what's coming; you can see his disgust and recoil from the unspoken thought in his eyes as he looks at you, questioning. "Was it true, what he said? Were you – "
The unwitting accusation pierces you; hardens your resolve, straightens your back. If there's one lesson you've learned today, it's that there are parts of yourself you must hide to have an existence in this world. And you've always been very good at hiding.
"That's a lie," you say hoarsely; and you know your voice carries the weight of truth. It's a 'your-word-against-theirs' scenario – and, not for the first time, you're immeasurably grateful you've got the solid backing of a reputation as a straight-laced, straight-A student. "Greenwood and I are barely friends. I've never been in a homosexual relationship in my life." You're ashamed to realize that it gives you a dark thrill of pleasure to see Parsons squirm in discomfort as you say 'homosexual'.
You can't help it; your gaze is drawn to him. Phil's cheeks are chalk white, his betrayed brown eyes huge wells of hurt. He looks like you've just slapped him across the face.
"Is that right?" And Phil – dear, sweet Phil who's honest as the day is long – bows his head in defeat.
"Yes, sir," he rasps.
Parsons looks vaguely reassured. "You'll both be excused from tomorrow's classes. Of course, I'll have to call your parents – "
"Please, sir; don't bother," you cut in quickly, heart leaping in anxiety. "My father's working late and won't answer any outside calls. I'll explain everything to him when he comes home, tonight. I can get along until then."
The history teacher doesn't like it; but he acquiesces, albeit reluctantly. "If you're sure, MacMillan… Go see the nurse, though, before you leave. She can check you out, give you…some band-aids, or an ice-pack, maybe… You, too; Greenwood."
"Of course, sir," you answer him, knowing full well you won't. All you need is another pair of eyes full of pity…or worse. Besides, you've got both band-aids and ice for a cold-pack at your place – which you'll have to find before your father gets there.
Parsons leaves you, then – and you and Phil are alone. Neither of you can stand to meet the other's eyes. Without a word, you limp your way over to one of the sinks, trying not to walk like you've been kicked by a horse; gingerly wash the blood from your split lip and the cut above your left eye. A check in the mirror shows they don't look too bad at all, once they're clean. You dress quickly and efficiently, sliding on socks and shoes; the long shirtsleeves and trouser-legs of your uniform neatly covering the bruises and scratches on your arms and shins, the padded blazer disguising the slight stoop in the set of your shoulders. There's a handkerchief in your pants pocket; that gets tied around your knee in a brace that lets you walk almost-normally. Your tie is straightened and your hair combed flat – and the ensemble is complete. Taking in the picture you present, you're gratified to see you look like you've done nothing more serious than trip going down the stairs (so long as you don't try and bend over).
Beside you, you're vaguely aware of Phil doing the same – or similar – things. You turn around…and it's simply amazing, how normal you both look. Just like magic. Like nothing ever happened.
And nothing did happen, you forcibly remind yourself. That's what you have to always remember. Nothing happened. Nothing at all…
Phil's eyes are boring into your skull, and so you raise your gaze to his face – a face that looks like a steak knife's been driven through his breast. By you. It sets a tightness clenching in the pit of your knotted stomach, your still-aching balls. "Joe – "
And your heart would clench, too, if it could – only it's encased in a solid block of glacier ice…or maybe granite. I'm sorry it has to be this way…
"Goodbye, Phil," you say, your expression schooled to perfect blankness; and you watch what color remains drain from his pain-twisted features.
You shoulder your gym bag, force yourself to straighten up to your full height despite the flaring piano-wire tautness in your ribs, and stride out the changeroom door.
You don't look back.
(You hide, and go on hiding – right up until you hear Simon Church speak at that conference in Europe…and his words of inspiration, like arrows, blow straight through you: because there it is again, the adventure of discovery. And it's more than a little frightening – how your instinctual…admiration? so easily overrides, drowns your practiced caution – but it's 1973, a brave new world; and the times have changed. Or, maybe, you have.
Not-so-simple-Simon – whose eyes, beautifully black as his skin, see much more of you than you'd ever credit or willingly reveal. Who never seeks the story you'll never tell behind your scars; who doesn't ask for the reason you sometimes jolt half-awake from nightmares at three in the morning, drenched in a cold sweat as you sob out, "Mummy, why'd you let go of my hand?" and only kisses your hair and holds you close until the tears stop rolling down your face and you drift off back to sleep. And there's that feeling again as the two of you, together, explore the continent; forge new blazing trails…only this time it burns brighter, hotter, closer to the heart: redefining itself; and in your fear you can't – or won't – give a name to it.
It all comes to a head the night Simon tells you he loves you – loves you: is that what it's called? – and you…you feel the desperate wanting throb all through you: but you can't say it back.
When, with that, the whirlwind tour is over – and Simon's gone and you're once again left stranded on the side of the road, in a cold and empty bed, alone – you realize the times, and you, haven't changed nearly as much as you'd thought. Not nearly enough.)
There's several hours between now and the time your father's supposed to arrive, so you lug down the first-aid kit from its perch on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard and rummage in it until you scrounge up a band-aid and some hydrogen peroxide for the cut over your eye. From the feel of it, it's swelled up a little; but you figure the band-aid should cover it nicely. And, once you've wrapped some ice in a spare towel from the bathroom, there's nothing left to do – it's just you and the solitude of an empty house.
All you can see – as you fling yourself down on your mattress in your room, icing your knee, and let your eyelids droop – is Mom…her dark eyes, dead as the windows of an abandoned building without the light behind them, set in a face crumpled like paper; staring straight ahead, staring at your father – not Dad, your father – as he watches the men in coats take her away.
(Their coats aren't white, as you'd been expecting for some reason, but rather a washed-out medical green that makes you think of limes and is somehow more frightening. You'll never eat anything with lime in it again.)
And then Mom's brown eyes become Phil's brown eyes – but it's the same pair of dead eyes staring out of the same crumpled-paper face, staring now at you as you stand in your father's place –
And you're sitting bolt upright, your own eyes flown wide open as they blink away tears-that-don't-exist…and you understand, you know – for a horrifying, sickening, fascinating moment – what it is to be your father.
(Your father doesn't know you saw; doesn't know you know Mom is – could be, might be – still alive. He'd told you first that she left him, abandoned you; then, later, that she was dead. In a way, you suppose, she really is – the part of her that counted, anyway; that mattered, that dreamed. And, so, you repay him in kind…and let him believe the lie: that you believe.)
You're doing the one thing you swore you'd never do – become your old man – and it terrifies you.
You've got your story for your father ready and rehearsed by the time you hear the car pull into the driveway at some time past midnight, though you know (as you roll over and pretend to sleep) the subject won't come up until tomorrow morning. At which point your glib response to the raised eyebrow is:
"Me and some of the others were just horsing around in the changeroom after gym class – guess it got a little out of hand." Superficially it's so close to the truth, it doesn't even sound like a lie. And if your eyes are red-rimmed and bloodshot, it's only because you stayed up too late, waiting (not because you were crying; because there's nothing to cry about).
You don't tell him you have the day off, since that would raise more questions than you've got answers for.
The eyebrow doesn't lower; but you get a perfunctory nod and a drawn-out, unbroken silence…and you know, though your father hasn't said a word, the conversation is closed.
Your father continues to say nothing – nothing at all – during the couple of weeks following that you spend pussy-footing around as you try to simultaneously hide and nurse your bruised ribs and wrenched knee, though you're sure he has his suspicions. You're not sure whether to thank him or hate him for it.
(You know, long before the letter from the school arrives concerning your conduct – and Phil's, and the three bullies' – that you're going to be switching schools again.)
It occurs to you eventually that what makes you different is that what you love, if you love – are you capable of loving? – is not flesh and blood, but the thoughts, the ideas, that they generate: that one thought, that single idea nobody sees and yet will shape the future bearing down on the unsuspecting world like a freight train; will change everything.
You wonder, sometimes, what it would be like to love a person.
(When twenty-two-year-old coder Cameron Howe drops in on your guest lecture in 1983, you think, for the first time, you might just find out. Because…to love the idea of Cameron is to love Cameron herself – a prodigy, a genius, a decade behind you in years and yet light-years ahead of where you were, then; she is tomorrow.
The threatening shape of her – prickly, uncompromising, unwilling to change to fit the world but rather changing the world to fit it – is perfect under your hands.
Her piercing, crystal-blue eyes see further than anyone else's – her blistering impatience, her unreasonable faults, her cutting tongue: they grate at you, strip you of all your armor, your defenses, your lies; flay you down to the bone and deeper, lay your heart open to her gaze. And you feel her dive in, feel her fingers working away there; as they skate and roam over your bare skin at night or tap in clacking strokes on a computer keyboard during the day: reprogramming, rewriting you to force a need for such honesty, such authenticity, that you actually break down at last and tell her – only her – the pure, unvarnished truth about your scars, about your mother who was so full of ideas that she turned to cigarettes and pills and strange white powders to keep them all inside, about the fall, about…everything. It's supposed to be contradictory – to feel so vulnerable and yet so safe at the same time – but, somehow, it isn't; when you're in her arms. Her eyes… LCD screens are about ten years down the road; but when they get here, you'll think on the words 'liquid crystal' and remember Cameron's eyes.
You're sure she must have found it, by now – the logic error in your source code, that prevents you from ever being able to be like the rest of humanity – but for all the changes she's made, she leaves this part of you untouched: instead, teaching you to read, to interpret, the output in ways you've never done, before. Discovery.
And now you think you may be ready, this time; to name this thing between you as love – but Cameron…you can't help but be afraid that she's seen, sees, too much: and that once she realizes that, for all your dreams and visions, you're still just a man – lost and searching – she'll drift away and leave you, too.)
You never see Phil again. His parents pull him out of school before the changeroom incident is a week old – you find out a short time later they've pulled up stakes completely and left the state.
(You only see his name again nearly twenty years later, at Cardiff; on the inside fold of a newspaper some visiting executive's discarded, left lying around on a side-table. You read of his success in business and marriage, his wife and two children – of how he went home to them one night…and shot himself with the handgun he'd kept locked in the top drawer of his study desk. You don't read his last words in the published suicide note which follows – you have a feeling you may already know what they are.
Cameron and Gordon look askance at the open bottle of slivovitz on your desk when the lunch hour rolls around – apart from it's against company policy, they know of your supposed preference for wines, certainly over Jewish brandy – but they've learned not to ask too many questions. They don't push for details. You don't give them any.)
You spend that June-July-August telling yourself it's for the best – a clean slate, a clean break. But, as you lie awake at night and not-tears stain your face, you can't help but wonder, wistfully, what it might have been like if he'd stayed.
It's a year later – the summer-of-your-first-love is over, a new school term is starting; and you're a year older…sixteen, now. You've grown, hit a late growth spurt in these few intervening months – and you find being suddenly several inches taller than your peers, shoulders broadened though your hips are still narrow, rather than making you clumsy and uncoordinated has given you a newfound confidence; lent a surety like grace to your steps and movements.
You take a calculated stroll, stalking down unfamiliar hallways like a brooding storm front in your denim and leather – no preppy private school, this – and discretely eye the senior girls in their miniskirts and skin-tight sweaters as they bend over to grab an armload of books from their lockers; giving you a good look at long, coltish legs that go on for miles. You do not eye the boys…especially not the more appealingly attractive ones; who lounge along the walls outside classroom doors like young wolves, hungry and lean.
It does not take long for you to feel the eyes similarly trained on you – curious and eager and predatory, giving you that first once-over, sizing you up: smelling fresh blood.
You crack a smile – a secret one, only for yourself – and set to work.
By the end of your first day, you've learned pretty Gennie – not Genevieve, thank you; she hates that name – Tilsden ranks top marks across all subjects in your year…and she's in your homeroom. That's about to change, you vow (by the time the midterms are over, it has), and flash her your most charming smile that has her blushing appreciatively as the teacher makes the introductions.
You make sure to brush your hand over the scratch-scarred wood of her desk as you walk back to your seat. You can feel the heat of her gaze following you, as it trails over your back…and lower.
Within three days, you've more than established a presence in terms of academic intelligence, studiously ignoring the swivel of Gennie's head as she turns to look at you each time your hand beats hers to an answer. By Friday, all you need to do is whisper in her ear, "Meet me out front of the boys' bathroom when the bell rings," as you stand behind her in line in the cafeteria to know she'll be there, waiting – and the squeak of her shocked astonishment is music to your ears as you propel her through the door, your hands gripping her by the shoulders, and roughly crush your mouth down over hers.
Her lips are soft and slightly moist, where Phil's were chapped and dry. She tastes of peppermint and bubblegum and schoolgirl naïveté (sweet sixteen and never been kissed) – you wonder if she can taste the tartness of now-habitual cynicism, like cigarette smoke, on your tongue. You pull back for a second to heave in a breath, taking in the dark pink of her flushed cheeks and the fever-brightness of her eyes – and then she's on you like a wildcat; arms coiling around you like a serpent, her nails digging into your shoulder-blades through the leather of your jacket as she stands on tiptoe, tries to hitch one leg up around your waist.
Your new height has given you new strength, and Gennie is a small girl – short and slender – so it takes relatively little effort to haul her up until her thighs lock snugly around your hips and you hold her there, palming her ass through the thin fabric of her summer skirt. Her body's pressed all along yours from chest to groin – and you can't help but notice how different it feels; how her curves are gentle and yielding where Phil was straight and hard and rigid. But her crotch is hot and damp as it grinds against yours encased in your jeans, and the sweet, desperate friction as your hips buck in answer is the same as you remember it.
Your lips never leave hers as you carry her across the floor to plunk her down on the counter of the row of sinks, still standing between her legs; her fingers tearing at your shirt as she works to untuck it. And then her hands are slipping under, are on bare skin; running over the smattering of freshly-sprouted hair there, traveling down the length of your lean torso – slightly repulsed (as she's supposed to be, you think resentfully) but undeterred by the scars she encounters – before moving round to the back to trace the ridge of your spine. Your open mouth trails wet kisses along her fine-boned jaw, slides down her neck, nips at her exposed collar-bones as you swiftly undo the buttons of her short-sleeved blouse. She gasps as your lips follow the path of your fingers, tracking down the bared expanse of her chest to meet the lace tops of her demure, strapless brassiere as they come to rest between her breasts; then gasps again, louder, at the feel of your hands on her naked back as they nimbly work open the clasp and yank it loose.
Her flesh is silky smooth, warm and supple as you squeeze and knead; her little breathy moans intoxicating as she leans against the mirror and arches into your touch. And then your mouth lifts, moves sideways – and Gennie's head falls back as you latch onto her right breast, suckling hard; your tongue lapping, dragging in slow swirls around and around and over her perking nipple. She shudders, and your now-empty left hand grips her hip to hold her steady; though your right never leaves its place, fingers pinching and tweaking. Her hands slither out from underneath your shirt to fist tightly in your hair – and she pulls, enough to make your scalp ache, cries out as your teeth graze the tender nub.
"Joe…" she sighs, making your jeans tighten uncomfortably, "oh, Joe…oh my God…"
And now she's pushing at your shoulders impatiently, struggling to sit up, as she seizes both your wrists and drags your hands down.
She knows what she wants, you have to give her that – and so you do, with pleasure; feeling up her thighs, rucking up the pleated folds of her skirt until it's bunched around her waist while your mouth switches sides to lavish the same attentions on her left breast it had on her right. You bring your left hand up to pick up where lips and tongue left off, massaging the spit-dampened skin and rolling the nipple between forefinger and thumb so your hard work doesn't go to waste – but your right hand you keep just where it is, fingers pressing against that soaked patch of cotton at the front of her panties and rubbing, fast and firm, until Gennie's needy whines turn breathless –
And then it's your turn to gasp, to suck in a hissing breath through clenched teeth as her hands leave your hair to scrabble first at your jeans, then your boxers as she gets both zippers down and reaches inside, her fingers closing around you. Your mouth leaves her skin with a lewd 'pop', your fingers stilling as she draws you out – the cool air, so brisk, feels so freeing… Her Siamese laser-green eyes – so different from Phil's soft brown – meet yours in a nervous smirk that's obviously meant to be coy.
"Big boy," she murmurs throatily; and her hot little palm is sweaty as it begins a long, slow slide down the shaft – oh! but it's not enough: you rip her hand away and bring it up to your mouth; lick a broad stripe from heel to fingers, tasting her salt and yours, before you shove it back down. Always the quick learner, she gets the idea; spits in her palm before taking you in hand once more – and God, the smooth, slippery glide is so, so familiar it would bring tears to your eyes…if the pleasure in its wake wasn't so all-consuming. And for all its familiarity, it's just as different: though Gennie's found a rhythm, she works you with short, jerking tugs – not at all like Phil's long, screwdriver-twisting pulls that spanned the length of you from base to head – but then, you consider indulgently, she can't have been blessed with quite the same hands-on, first-hand experience…can she?
Regardless, the result is toe-curling at any rate – and right now that's all you have time or inclination to be caring about. Gennie's hitting her stride, now: adding deliciously painful squeezes, thumbing over your already-weeping slit with each pass; daring to be brave enough to reach for your balls with her other hand, testing the weight of them, rolling them gently, experimentally –
You bite back a groan, smother it by going in for another kiss. She meets you eagerly halfway – and then huffs in breathless surprise as you hook your fingers in her waistband and tear her panties down her long legs so they hang limp around her ankles, and drag her to the edge of the counter, closer to you. Your palms are on her shapely thighs again, spreading them wide – and she moans, long and loud, into your mouth as your right hand's fingers reach between and touch her, bare, there for the first time.
Her hand leaves off fondling your balls to clutch for purchase at your shoulder, the pads of her fingers digging into the bones there – and you, for your part, nearly stutter to a halt again as more profound novelties now assert themselves: you're shocked, distracted for a split instant by how Gennie folds inward under your touch, where Phil jutted out…but (what else did you expect?) it's all perfectly normal, of course, even if it does feel not quite natural; and that's what this is about, after all – being normal. Normal and natural – there is a difference, you've learned, between the two. And the soft scratch of wiry curls, the hot slickness drenching your hand, are very much the same.
She melts beneath you as you bear down on her; and so, you press forth, explore – tracing and probing, until your fingers happen to run over a sensitive, turgid little bundle of nerves that swells under your ministrations and has Gennie jumping, hips bucking forward so she meets the curve of your cupped palm, her moans choked off by a sudden cry muffled by the hard press of your lips on hers. You brace your left hand on her thigh, splayed fingers bound to leave bruises – forcing her legs to stay open, holding her down – even as her grip on your cock tightens almost unbearably while her hand on your shoulder climbs back into your hair, curling into it, grasping the short strands for an anchor. The kiss you two share is wet as it is sloppy: all clacking teeth and twined tongues dueling for dominance like a pair of angry Moray eels; filled with a frantic urgency – an ardor – that had not been there previously.
Keeping your thumb on her clit (how well you remember reproductive biology one-oh-one), circling it steadily round and round, you reach back with your fingers, searching – until they find what they're looking for and make that first dip, that first push, up and in. Gennie lugs on your hair with enough gusto to nearly scalp you as she lets out a very unladylike squeal – unladylike, for a young lady who's allowing, begging a young man to finger her while she gives him a handjob in the boys' bathroom of the local high school.
"Yes, Joe; more. Give me more. Please. Please…" She's babbling, pleading, her eyes molten and black as your own must be; and she punctuates her words with – finally – long, dragging, wrenching pulls so it's all you can do not to thrust into that narrow, close little tunnel her hand makes. And it would be nigh unconscionable to refuse her request, but first – You take your hand away, earning yourself a whimper of serious disappointment, as it comes up to your mouth, shiny and dripping; and you stare right into Gennie's widening eyes as you draw your fingers through your parted lips to let the evidence of her arousal fall across your tongue. The sharp tang of her is sweet as it is bitter: the flavor of guilty victory – an acquired taste. She's struck speechless by how shockingly sinful, how dirty, this is – but she's no more the type to back down from a challenge than you are; and so, she grabs hold of your proffered hand and takes your fingers into her own mouth, cheeks hollowing as she sucks on them for the dregs, for what remnants are to be had, tasting herself.
You smile – a pointed, cutting thing – and reward her by trailing your hand down again between your bodies and shifting it into place. Your fingers know the path now, make their way leisurely amid her flower-petal folds…and now you begin your own slow slide as, with a delicacy that belies your frenetic state, the tip of one long forefinger maneuvers its way past her entrance and slips inside –
It's a snug fit, and the heat is scalding, incredible; but Gennie's body gives beautifully under your prodding, pressing touch: opening for you, easing your passage, and you work your way deeper, deeper – and you watch her back and neck arch like a dancing swan's as her mouth, so pretty, so red, drops open wide in a silent scream. Her eyes are rolling back into her head as they flutter closed, and you're sure she's seeing those same stars you did, years before.
At long last, you're buried in her to the hilt. She finds her voice to again beg you shamelessly, wantonly, for more – and you're happy to oblige; already tickling, teasing her with the promise of a second finger, when you hear it –
The bathroom door creaks as it inches open, preceding the flat clap of Mary Janes announcing the quick footsteps that come around the corner. A snooty, snippety voice calls out in an aggravating nasal twang, "Gennie? I know you're here, I saw you come in with – "
The phrase is abruptly cut off by a near-scandalized gasp – and, in the mirror, your snapped-up gaze catches the eyes of Doreen Medwynn: Gennie's best friend and the school's worst (as in most insatiable) gossip…and the only person whose nosy curiosity you'd trust to urge her into breaking taboo and trespassing on forbidden territory.
With dainty hands raised to her O-shaped mouth, her stance affects that of a snared rabbit – but her beady, shrewish eyes do not flinch from yours as they take in Gennie's rumpled half-nakedness and your own state of acute dishabille, both of your flushed and sweating faces, your pressed-together bodies. She makes no move to leave – and, as she so obviously expects a show, you offer her one along with an absolutely wicked, thin-lipped smile…and let her see the effect the addition of another finger has on her girlfriend as you ease it all the way in. Gennie's oblivious, too far gone to notice anything; her thighs tremble and she moans as if tortured as your two inserted fingers scissor and stretch inside her before beginning to pump in and out, in and out in a steady rhythm as your thumb keeps up its small circles and sweeps over her swollen clit, back and forth, back and forth in the same beat, the same cadence, your eyes never leaving Doreen's –
And then, something in the texture beneath your fingertips changes as you press them forward as far as you can reach: they seem to snag on a patch of new and unexpected roughness, firmness – and Gennie goes rigid, quivering, as she lets out a little shriek, face buried in the side of your neck as you loom over her…and you realize you've managed to find what you'd so far only heard vague reference made to in ribald fable and humor. And so you crook your fingers deliberately and brush over that secret spot again – and again, and again: faster, now; and faster still as Gennie's moans grow increasingly high-pitched and desperate, forming an aria of escalating oh Oh OH!s, her grip on your hair pulling painfully, and her hand moves over you frenziedly –
White-hot pleasure is pooling, coiling in your gut; intense pressure building in the pit of your belly, between your thighs, at the base of your spine: the first tingles of orgasm beginning to spread, unravelling like thread from a dropped spool. Gennie's shaking, uncontrollably now, beneath you; your own knees are buckling with tremors, so you're sure only your hold on her outflung leg is keeping you upright – this can't possibly last, you're both so close, locked to one another in a race to the end…but, for your stubborn pride and the still-watching Doreen and the vindictive point you're trying to prove, you'll be damned if Gennie doesn't reach that finish line first.
You curl your fingers cruelly, making a hook, and dig in, drive in: harder – and your eyes pin the beet-red Doreen in place as your simpering smile widens into a grin of obscene triumph, like a shark smelling blood in the water, when your fingers feel that first convulsive clench around them as Gennie's suddenly there: putty under your hands, whole body spasming and arching against you, keening in a drawn-out, open-mouthed wail of ecstasy as she reaches the peak of that final release –
(The gossip's flustered, face flaming: she'll remember what she's seen, of that you have no doubt. She's glaring daggers at you as she all but flees the bathroom – but her furious gaze is filled not with disgust…but rather jealousy.
By the time school starts up again on Monday morning, the news has spread like wildfire: how, before the first week was out, the new guy nailed the smartest girl in the eleventh grade – brought her to screaming climax – in the magnificent squalor of the boy's room. Rumors and whispers fly…but the eyes that track you now hold a dubious respect; nary a one thinks to question which side of the fence you're on: that's been decisively, unequivocally put to rest – etched in stone.
Perfect: that's just the way you like it.)
– and it's enough to send you hurtling over the edge of that last cliff in freefall after her as you reach your own summit, world whiting out as the ultimate pleasure washes, breaks over you in cresting waves… You muffle your delirious groans in the crook of Gennie's neck as your head drops to her shoulder; sucking, biting a fair-sized hickey into the soft, delectable skin there that her hair won't quite cover as a memento, a bruised and puffy souvenir.
If you could think around the roaring ocean of blood pounding in your ears – feel beyond this achieved, attained nirvana, this sea of euphoria – you might even now remember Phil, and come to know the treacherous despair of Judas, that lost twelfth disciple…
But to be able to feel anything at all, you reason contemplatively, first you have to survive.
(Time: passed – years: rolled on by. A venerable, brown-bricked building. Wood-paneled interior walls, mahogany-warm. An office door that reads, 'Joe MacMillan – HUMANITIES'.
Lime-colored walls – bitter, but no longer frightening. An old Cardiff Electric model. A carved stone statuette of Buddha. Rows of books. Photographs – memoirs – of Cameron, of Gordon, of Haley…of you with your mother.
A cluttered, well-used desk. A Japanese tetsubin, from which you pour yourself a cup of tea and take a sip.
And a blue-and-white diamond-backed tarot card – peeling slightly at the edges, beginning to fade – that you've been told shows your future: a thicket of swords thrust into a prone body.
Destruction. Agony of indecision. Misery. Nothing new – you've lived with these all your life. And yet…
Behind the picket fence of blades: a glimpse of a golden horizon beyond the storm clouds.
You tuck the card carefully into the book you're reading to mark your place –
And smile. Resolve to wait. Wonder. And…move on.)
