Chapter 14

I do not know how we got down from the roof, or built the fire up again or how long we sat in front of it, shivering and cold, or if we slept

It was what I was trying not to think about that I was aware of, what filled my mind and kept me from thinking of anything. The fire had blazed and died before I found myself able to speak. It was dark and Mar swung in a hanging chair beside me. Both of us looked into the fire more than at each other.

"You like the rain, don't you?" Mar said. I felt she was testing the atmosphere between us.

"Yes," I answered, "very much."

"You're in good spirits."

I could say nothing. I leaned back and looked into the fire. I thought of the big black man whose story I had heard at the party. It seemed now like such a sad, silly tale. It seemed so strange that such a quirk of nature could so change and govern a life.

"Have you ever had a black lover?" I asked her quite suddenly.

Her face showed that she was startled by the question. "Sure," she said, looking at me quizzically.

I met her gaze, trying myself to decide why I had asked the question, and giving up, I grinned and said, "Good."

Her eyes held on my face, strong and immobile. "I just realized how little I really know you," she said thoughtfully.

Her seriousness made me a little uneasy. "Why?"

"When you asked that I hadn't the faintest notion what you were talking about."

I grinned as disarmingly as I could.

"It was nothing, really, I don't even know why I said it."

"I wonder what time it is?" she said pensively. "God, we're out of wood."

She turned back to me, somehow engaging me once again. "There is a door in the hall just as you come in. That's where I keep the extra wood."

I got up quickly and went to the hall.

"He was a great big guy," she called out after me.

I filled my naked arms with the heavy rough wood and carried it toward the big wicker wood basket near the fireplace.

"Big muscle bound dude," she continued. "Big prick on him."

"Hey ;. . you don't have to tell me about it," i interrupted her.

"No, I haven't thought about him in a long time, let me tell you."

She sat up amid the pillows and stretched her hands towards the fire, the room had begun to cool. "For some reason I thought I was really gone for him. Not in love, I don't mean. It was . . . " she frowned for a moment and then smiled. "Lust," she laughed aloud.

"I couldn't wait It was one of Dad's parties so I dragged him off to my corner and started in on him. He had this god damn monster, you know, but he couldn't get it up." She smiled, apparently remembering the big Negro with pleasure.

"So what happened."

"Well," she grinned now, "when all else fails a girl can always suck. And let me tell you, I sucked like I've never sucked anything before. He just lay back and enjoyed it. I couldn't believe it. Td never seen a man like that then or since. Most men, when they're not up the first couple of minutes, they start to panic, you know?" she looked at me for confirmation.

I smiled seriously and shrugged my shoulders. "Who knows?" I said, a bit too casually.

"Well, yeah. If you've never had the problem."

She started laughing out loud. "Anyway, every time I would get this dude up so I could get on him, he would fall apart under me. You have never seen anyone as frustrated as I was, and he just lay there; the son of a bitch, and grinned at me."

We laughed quietly together, looking into the fire. "So anyway," she continued after a moment "I kept him around for about three days and he never did get it on for me."

"Three days?"

"I guess I was trying to figure it out, or my pride was involved or something. So finally I told

Dad about it. He had been teasing me about my black stud anyway and he just started to laugh-He told me that the guy was into so many things that he didn't have time for sex, or energy or something like that. He said there were people who were so heavy into the hustling thing, like for money or something, that they lose their sex altogether."

That kind of jibes," I said, lying back on the pillow. "Like dope peddlers on the street and so forth, they are never into sex."

That's the point," she said, turning to look down at me. "Later, I found he was an "H" user. It's the dope that kills the sex.

"Anyway, that's the story of my only black man. I never really thought about it again," she said. "I suppose I just drew some conclusions from it"

I looked at her, unaware that a frown had spread across my face.

"Wait! Wait! Wait," she laughed, I'm not making any generalizations."

"I wouldn't accuse you of that," I said.

"Why not?" she said, studying my face quite seriously.

"I don't know," I shrugged. "I don't think I would feel safe getting into an intellectual argument with you."

"Wow," she looked at me incredulously. "You mean you can say that just like that."

"What?"

"What you just said."

"Sure."

She looked at me quizzically for several moments then turned and shrugged her shoulders lightly. "I doubt," she said, "that I am your intellectual superior." She deliberately overemphasized the last two words.

"I kind of assumed," I said. "How much school have you had?"

"Surely you don't think that has anything to do with it?"

"I don't know," I said. "I don't have the experience."

"Well, I have the whole schmatta," she said, "and I can tell you, it doesn't." She became quiet suddenly. "I've been in all the big, classy schools in this state. All I ever was in any of them was John Barr's daughter. He's a big name in the art schools and once they found out, that was it. I mean, they don't take women seriously anyway, not in art, but if you're the daughter of a well-known artist, then baby, you are just cashing in."

"Are there any great female artists," I asked.

"What the hell do I care," she said flatly.

"I didn't mean that."

"I know you didn't." She leaned back and slipped her arm under my back and put her head on my shoulder. "I think it's getting light out," she said.

"Tired," I asked.

"Uh ha," she murmured.

"One more time," I said.

She looked up into my face. "One more time," she said and slid her other arm around my belly. "I've never enjoyed it so much."

"Neither have I," I answered. "Every time my belly touches yours, I think it will never be that beautiful again."

"I love the weight of you on top of me, your body pressing down on my breasts."

I slipped one hand over her breast, tickling her lightly. "Think of me," I said, "when I lower my body down on yours and feel your breasts under me, feel them against my chest."

A small chill ran through her body. "The feel," she said, "of your hip on the insides of my thighs. I want to spread them wider so that you can come even further into me but I like the feeling of them so much I sometimes close them and I like to put my leg around you so I can feel you work." She kissed me softly on the chest. "Let's get a mirror sometime, so I can watch your ass go up and down."

"You want to know the very best moment for me?"

"Yes," she said, "then when that moment comes I'll know its good for you."

"When I'm already lying down on top of you and I raise my hips and point it at you."

"Aaaaaaahh," she sighed.

"When my cock first touches your cunt. Their lips. Right then, just before I push in. Right when my cock first pushes against your lips and starts to slip in."

"Is that why you pause sometimes, right when you've just come in a little bit, because you like it?"

"Yeah, I used to dream about that when I was a kid, you know, the first moment. When I would fuck a woman for the first time. I could almost feel those warm hairy things cover the head of my dick when I was a kid."

"I know what you mean," she said. "When I was little what I thought of was when a man, and he was always the most gorgeous man in the world," she giggled a little, "when he was all the way in me and then smiled down at me. That was it; the look I always imagined on his face when he was all the way in me for the first time."

"How did he look?"

"Oh...he smiled beautifully." She nestled her face into my chest again. "You know," she said, "I never thought of the penis itself when I was little. I never thought of that until I saw my father's. It was so huge and I never realized."

She moved her head and looked down at mine. It had grown half erect and now came up completely under her gaze.

"Such proud arrogant things they are," she said. "Look at him, standing up like that, demanding that he be taken care of."

I looked down at him too. Standing up out of my body. She looked at my face.

"You're the servant, aren't you."

I nodded. Yes, that was true, I was the servant

"You're the servant," she repeated. "He is the master. And he needs me, doesn't he?" She looked up at me again. "That's the truth, isn't it? Without a woman, he isn't complete, is he? He can't do his thing at all?" She thought of this happily for a few minutes.

"That's what I've never understood before. i always thought the man was the master but the man is the servant." She reached out and squeezed him with gentle familiarity. "Hello, master of men," she said to my cock. "You're a beauty."

I'm going to do a series of photos with that as the theme," she said suddenly.

"That's not all though," I said. "You're his servant as much as I am."

She looked at my red prick, silent, considering if she wished to be his servant also. "Yes . . . " she said slowly. "In a way you're right...he is the symbol, isn't he."

Mar removed her arm from around my waist and I relaxed into the pillows.

"Don't play with our new master."

Mar leaned over me so that one of her fine brown nipples settled down on the raised head of my penis.

"Except for that a man is whole, isn't he?" she said. "He owns himself, but this," she moved her breast around, smearing her nipple with the beads of come, ". . . but this you don't own." She smiled up at me. "This is like your plug into nature and everything."

"And women," I asked.

"They have an empty hole in them."

"It's supposed to be the perfect plan," she went on.

"It isn't though, is it? It would be perfect if each of us was complete, instead of provided with a connection which we always have to worry about getting connected."

Mar laughed out loud. "I can't see you having any trouble getting connected."

"Nor you." I looked at her face and breasts hanging down, covering the head of my dick. "You're a beautiful girl. Come on and fill up your hole with my cork or whatever you called it"

"Your plug into nature," she said. "Your great big, beautiful, hard plug into my natural, empty hole of nature. I want to feel you filling me up, to feel that big prick spitting into my guts."

She swung a leg over my body and began lowering herself down toward my standing penis. Knowing the sinking point of her own body, she did not miss, but came directly down on me, enveloping me inside herself.

"Aaaaah. That is so good," she said.

I felt the open lips gnawing away at my ball bag.

"Fuck me, baby," I said, my voice becoming lower. "Fuck me like I fucked you."

"I can't," she said. "I would if I could."

"I know, I was teasing. I don't have the energy anyway."

She raised her ass slightly up off my crotch, sliding a few inches up the length of my cock.

She moved on me for several minutes. Tired as I was I had no need now to push the climax, but rather desired the feel of our bodies being joined.

Later, though, as the heat began to build in me and she became tired, I put my heels into the floor and began stabbing up into her. She leaned over me so that her breasts hung down onto my chest and her hips were above me. I slammed at her from the floor, lurching in and out of her, my full length until the almost dry well of my body began once more to pump in short hot spasms. I felt almost the rack of pain as there seemed very little to be pumped out of me.

She collapsed down on me with a heavy contented sigh.

"Paul," she murmured. "Paul, thank you. I'm sorry it's over."

I lay awake only a moment longer, thinking of the terrifying scene on the roof. My shoulder still hurt a little and showed teeth marks.

Was Mar right about it Was it a marvelous experience? I could not even remember what had happened. I drifted off to sleep.

It was mid-morning when I woke up with a start. I had been dreaming, Janice crying, Charlie accusing me.

I looked down at Mar. She had known. She had seen me come apart. I had raped her. There was no reason.

The knot of fear grew larger as I remembered the incredibly pleasant conversation we had had after, both of us knowing what had happened.

What was happening to me?

Quickly I got up and found my clothes.

Once in the street I had the sensation of having escaped danger, of being once again free. I began to walk rapidly away and my mind whirled madly around and around.

I felt sand under my feet heard the rocking squeak of boats moored in the harbor of the city pier.

At last I lay down in the sand.

I lay in the hot sand, letting the sun beat down on me for a long time. Above me the sky was clear, there would be no rain tonight, the rainy season was over.

I thought of Mar, lying as I had last seen her on the pillows, asleep before the cold embers in the great stone hearth which her father had built. I thought of my freedom as the waves crashed into the beach and bubbled away in their impotent fury at the land for standing almost forever beyond their reach.

The turmoil of the city swelled to mid-morning confusion behind me. Marlis was there somewhere in the middle of that rising crisis. I wondered if she would go away with me.

I knew quite suddenly that I would be gone by evening, that this beach and this city would be slipped away from, left behind, escaped.

Charlie was right, everything was crazy here.

Where would we go, Marlis and I?