At 21

1992

I open my heavy eyelids and see her staring down at me. She comes slowly into beautiful focus. Elisa. The most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. Or at least the most beautiful girl who’s ever let me put my tongue in her warmest, darkest places. A short, frizzy mess of black hair. Big smile, just the right amount of teeth and gum. An infectious laugh, husky and wonderful, a smoker’s laugh. A body that bulges and dips in all the right places. Tall, olive skinned. An intoxicating scent that ignites me, spicy yet still sweet. She does it for me. I’ve never felt this way about anyone, not even about that girl I almost married when I was seventeen.

When you make love to someone for the first time, you know almost immediately if your bodies fit properly together. We fit. Ervin and Elisa. I slide gently in and find my place. It’s right. Like our bodies are puzzle pieces snapping into place. So fucking right. I’m twenty-one, Elisa is twenty. I’ve only had a few sexual partners (two and a half or three, depending on your definition of "sex") and Elisa’s had many. Before we’d had sex, I worried that my average-sized dick would be too small to satisfy a girl who’s been around. But I needn’t have worried. It’s fate. We’ve only had sex a couple of times, but each time we do it our connection grows stronger. We both realize that we’re perfect for each other. Or maybe she’s realized it at this very moment, while she looks down at me with glossy eyes. She’s staring so intently at my face that I’m suddenly uncomfortable. I don’t like being studied. I’m afraid she’ll find some flaw that she hadn’t previously noticed, something that’ll turn her off to me completely. She stare at my face and think Oh shit, I hadn’t noticed that ugly bump on his nose before. Gross. Guess I can never have sex with him again. Oh, well.

She has a weird, twitchy kind of smirk across her face, and I wonder if maybe she’s drawn a penis on my forehead with a magic marker for laughs. She’s staring, smiling, biting her lip, her dark eyes big and attentive. She’s looking at me as if I’m a puzzle, a mystery that’s she just begun to figure out. I’m on my back on the living room floor. Arms behind my head. A thick blanket beneath me. I’m wearing only my underwear, tight and white, oh yeah, just like the ladies like ‘em; Elisa’s wearing one of my long T-shirts and nothing else. My mother is at work, on the overnight shift at a greasy burger place the size of a backyard shed. William, my younger brother, is upstairs sleeping. David is in jail, which is not uncommon (Dave and his father stole a car together, rather unsuccessfully. Not the best way for a father and son to bond, I suspect). Ron and Sheri are living in Florida. I don’t think my father is coming home tonight either, since he hasn’t been home since 1976. He may have been abducted by aliens, or he might just be a deadbeat douchebag. It’s the middle of the night. Two in the morning. We made love at midnight and then passed out in each other’s arms while watching Frankenhooker. But now I’m awake and she’s still staring. Her fingers gently brush over my cheek. I know it’s not a dream because I can smell the scent of sex on her fingers.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" My face flushes, but it’s dark and she can’t tell. I hate when anyone looks at me for too long. I’m not a fucking painting. Look at something else. But then I feel okay about it. Because it’s Elisa. Because she’s smiling. Because her eyes are damp.
Her fingers graze my lips; I lick the sweet taste of sex off of them.

"You’re so beautiful," she says, in a poetic whisper. "Make love to me."

It’s an amazing moment. To have this goddess of a girl say those sweet words to me. To me. The hair on my arms stands on end. I’m speechless.

Even though I’m still groggy, even though her scent is still on me from the unprotected sex we’d had a little earlier in the evening, I’m instantly aroused, the kind of aroused where the throbbing and stretching threatens to tear right through my clothes. She’s quickly on top of me, pulling off my underwear, easing me in. No foreplay. None needed. Her words were enough. Elisa’s already ready. Drippingly ready. She rides me unrelentingly hard and I finish in what seems like a minute. I let it all out. Everything I have. We wrap our arms around each other and suddenly, for no reason I can even comprehend, we’re both crying. Then I know we’re crying because it’s right. Because it’s perfect. She tells me not to take it out; she hates when I take it out; she hates that feeling of sudden loss. Soon, though, the blood will flow back where it’s supposed to, and it’ll slide out on its own. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can’t keep something where you want it. That’s life.

"Keep it in as long as you can," she says. "Please."

I nod, but it’s already almost too late. The blood is making its way elsewhere, back to my brain maybe, which is still illogical with lust.

My small, soft manhood slips out and I hear her resigned sigh. I feel awful for having let her down.

Elisa kisses my scarred left hand, and I tell her how hideous-looking I think it is. She says, "Nonsense. It’s beautiful, like everything else about you." I tell her the story of how my mother freaked out when a doctor suggested that they might have to chop off my hand. Mom drove me to a different hospital, where they said they could save it. All it took was three months in the hospital with my hand elevated, hanging from a metal pole with wheels. But it was worth it. Because I don’t have a hook for a hand. I’m sure Elisa wouldn’t love me if I had a hook. The only good a guy gets out of having a hook for a hand is stalking kids at Lover’s Lane or chasing after Peter Pan.

"That ridiculous," she says. "I’d love you with a hand or without."

I smile. "Are you admitting that you love me?" The "love" word had never come up in conversation, but we’ve clearly been headed in that direction for weeks now.

"Shut up, dork," she says sweetly. "I’m just saying, I’d take you any way I could get you, is all. A hand is just a hand. You’re more than that."

"Would you love me if I didn’t have a dick?"

"Don’t get crazy now, Ervin. I like sex too much to spend my life with a guy with no dick."

She has a boyfriend and she’s cheating on him with me. I’m slowly winning her over and one day soon she’ll be mine. All mine. I already love her more than I’ve ever loved anyone. I fucking love her so much that my stomach burns every time I think of her with that other guy. Still, right now, I’m the other man, and none of this is real. We’re in Fantasy Land. Every Wednesday night she comes over, we watch a movie, passing the time until my kid brother goes to bed. Then we have sex. I never last very long because it feels too good. She feels too good. We’re in a little pocket universe of our own creation. We’re scientists and we’ve created a secret world.

Everyone at work knows what’s going on. The way we look at each other. Flirting, hugging, longing glances. How could they not know? I’m an assistant manager at a large pizza chain that for our purposes we’ll just call Pizza Tent, and she’s a counter girl. I give her special treatment, because I can. Elisa’s boyfriend lives in Philadelphia, and she spends every weekend with him. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I long for Mondays, to see her again. A couple of hours a week. That’s all we have. I want more. I want all of her. If I could just stay hard forever she’d never leave. I get soft and she goes and spends the weekend with him, her real boyfriend. I explode inside because I know she’s fucking him. I wonder who she enjoys more. I wonder if she begs him not to take it out. Last week I asked her if he was bigger than me, and she wouldn’t answer. It’s not that I necessarily mind her having sex with her boyfriend—I just don’t want her to enjoy it. I don’t want him to have a bigger dick than me. Is that too much to ask?

"I don’t want to share you with that guy anymore," I say.

"I’m working on it," she says. She’s standing up, with a towel between her legs, wiping away my mess. "I should go." Her dark pubic hair is neatly-trimmed, shaped like a triangle. Her toenails are a faded, chipped red. She bruises easily. Her breasts are perky. Her ass is round and just about perfect. When I look at her ass, I want to do sinful things to it.

"That’s gross," she says, reading my mind.

I stand up and wrap my arms around her. "Why do you have to have sex with him?"

She laughs. "He’s my boyfriend. Duh! If I don’t have sex with him, he’s going to know something’s up."

"Just dump him. Let me be your boyfriend," I say.

She looks away from me. "I have to go now. I’ll see you at work tomorrow."

I watch as she slides on her panties and bra, her tight jeans. She catches me staring and winks, licks her lips.

"If it helps you any," she begins, "when I’m having sex with him, mostly I’m thinking about you."

"Do you use a rubber when you have sex with him?" I ask.

"You know I’m on the Pill, baby. Don’t you think it’d be a bit suspicious if all of a sudden I asked him to start wearing rubbers after two years of not wearing them?"

"Yeah, I guess. Good point."

She leaves me. Next time, I will tell her I love her. Next time, I will demand that she be my girl and my girl only. I can’t keep going like this. Sharing. I’m losing my mind. When she’s gone, on the weekends, off with him, I don’t shower. For several days I keep her scent on me, until I can get the real thing again. My weekends are spent pacing, worrying, my stomach turning, my skin burning, because on the weekends the woman I love is busy screwing another guy. If this keeps up much longer, I’m going to lose my fucking mind. Every weekend Elisa slips away. You just can’t keep something where you want it forever.