“Nice underwear,” he slurred savagely, referring to my black Hanky Panky lace bra and thong. He peeled off his sodden shirt so that he could press his flesh to mine. I was shocked to discover that his torso was littered, front and back, with surgical scars. “What are they?” I asked, pulling away.
“Just benign tumors,” he shrugged, mashing his mouth to mine. Twenty-five red-pink incisions the diameter of half-dollars. Benign tumors, replayed in my mind, mixing with the long-ago words of my mother’s oncologist, Dr. Mendolssohn: Thousands of tiny tumors. Inoperable. It’s like someone spilled a pepper shaker onto your mother’s brain.
Tony pulled me onto his lap and squeezed my breasts in a way that recalled my father’s hands on my mother’s body. This is what men and women do. I pushed him back onto the bed, straddling him, his turgid cock pricking up between my legs. I bent to kiss each scar, imagining that they represented unspoken pain and I was the mystical priestess who could heal him.
“So, can you do it?” he asked, pulling me eye to eye like my father used to do. He was sick of the nursemaid game, I could tell. He sucked brutally on my nipples which hardened into petrified pink nubs underneath the lace.
“Do what?” I asked, naively, touching his hair, trying to make what we were doing tender.
He cackled. “Can you fuck your boss?”
I tried to act cool, but I had been wondering the same thing. Could I fuck my boss? I kissed him forcefully, tearing at his boxer shorts as he hooked his thumbs in the sides of my thong, nearly ripping the lace that I had spent $120 on. Although I longed to give in, to let him take me, I hesitated. What was wrong? I was so wet and horny—for him, for the status and success he symbolized—but could I really fuck my boss? Until that moment, I figured it wasn’t cheating as long as we didn’t actually have sex, but I grew less sure of the distance between my body, his and the Rubicon.
***
Today, when I think back to that moment—Tony and I laying shipwrecked on the sagging hotel bed before rolling onto the floor—an invisible strap constricts my breath to rasps. My heart pounds like a rabbit—thud-thud-thud—chased into a dark, slimy drainpipe by something fur-matted and growling. My thoughts skip right round like a record—What do I do? What do I do? The room narrows to a yellow halo of lamplight silhouetting Tony’s head as I gaze up at his darkness. Beneath his weight, my jackrabbit heart swells against the corset of my ribcage, my fearful desire bounding in waves, breaking the levee. I am his.
My eyelids drowse, heavy like sinkers, my hips the boom of a dredger, troweling along the muddy lake bottom, pulling me under. I tried not to end up here, a feeble voice whines against the sucking waters of desire, his pelvis against mine. His stubby, hard cock stirs between my legs as he waits for me to decide: can I fuck my boss? I like this temporary power I have over him. I toy with his lust, even as it terrifies me. I wanna make you come first, I moan, biting his ear, buying time as the tip of his cock twitches against the moist lips of my sex. I haven’t said yes yet. He’ll wait until I do. Or will he?
He flips me on my back; my heart thrashes against the bones. There is no hiding now. No text messages, no computer screens, no pixels, no double entendre, no plausible deniability. We are here in body. I regret my victory almost instantly as I can foresee everything that I will eventually do to ruin my life because of him—the lengths I will go to capture his affection, the people I will hurt, the career I’ll scuttle, the reputations of us all that I will bring down. I don’t pause to consider that Tony has choreographed the entire weekend with the intent of seducing me. Dumb bunny. I believed that I was seducing him. It will take many more anguishing months to realize what I fool I was. What a fool I am.
As we kiss, I fight back a lurch of vodka, wine and cowardice. What have I done? I ask myself, taking over my mother’s demands. Nothing—not yet, I protest, but that’s not true. I kept ringing the bell to summon him, and now Tony is here in the flesh, this humid, hairless man sporting the beginning of love handles, his naked body pressing down on mine. It reminds me of when my father used to hold me to the carpet for Tickle Torture, making me laugh until I couldn’t breathe, straddling my tween-age hips with his man-sized thighs. It felt wonderful and horrible to have his full, focused attention until I couldn’t it. I was always terrified of what he would do to me, the idea, the threat, was worse than the act, but a part of me likes being terrified. This is how we were close.
This is what drowning feels like, I think, my breath growing thin. Maybe I’ll pass out and Tony will rescue me. The dim light of the cheap lamp shrinks into a pinpoint as I fall, caught in eddies of murky black. Slippery glutinous reeds brush their tips against my skin as I fall all the way to the silty bottom, the rippling darkness closing overhead. What does it mean to be good? I wonder as I enter this new world, an immigrant to foreign shores. I want to ask Tony to teach me the customs, but I know he’ll say I’ll have to figure it out for myself. His tongue plunges inside my mouth, silencing me. A voice says I can do nothing but accept what I’m given—I’ve won him, the golden prize.
He’s exactly what I asked for, yet not as I imagined, like everything else I’ve ever desired and then achieved. As his fingers plunge inside me, my passport to the Old Country slips from my hand; there’s no turning back. I give into him the way I used to daydream I would, his soft paper-pusher’s hands pressing into the white meat of my thighs. Later, I’ll find russet-fingered ghost hands on my flesh. He whispers a dirty, magic word and my perfectly waxed legs lapse apart, open sesame. This is it, I think, as his mouth works its way from my breasts to where his fingers are. His face disappears between my thighs as I sigh, I’ve made it—I finally have it all.