she doesn’t have any hips and she doesn’t have an ass – though she hides what she has under two-size-too-big sweatpants; her voice is shrill and argumentative and she doesn’t have any tits,
but she’s only 18, so she’s just right for me.
she has no experience on matters of life and death, and when you ask her how she feels, her expression is bereft – she only knows enough just to skirt on the fringes of friendships contingent on how they look: you know about Thrasher magazine. that’s a bonus. now maybe you could reward yourself with a donut.
“A naïve child and his damaged family are infiltrated by a lecherous water nymph.”
It was just after midnight, and Jimmy’s parents were fighting again. He couldn’t lay in bed one more minute and listen to them argue about things he didn’t – or couldn’t – understand. So he slipped out of his room and passed their bedroom door, down the stairs to the front door, put on his coat & boots and left. He ran to the other side of the street – making sure to look both ways – and skidded down the slippery, grassy knoll till he found his footing on the gravel trail that boarded the lakeside. During the summer months, the oceanfront town they lived in would keep the man-made lake stocked with fish, fed-in through an underground reservoir. But it was the middle of winter and the lake was as still as the undisturbed snow that lay at the boy’s feet. He loved the water: being close to it, in it… everything. He was an avid swimmer, when his parents could remember to take him to his lessons. But in the meantime he was contented with being so close to the park. It was cold just standing still, so Jimmy rocked back-and-forth in his boots; the soles making a satisfying squish against the wet snow. Up and down, rhythmically, without even realizing he was doing it. A ripple. He had to blink a few times to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was, far out in the water: like a fish swimming close to the surface. A really big fish! And it was coming straight towards him, clear as night under the bright November moon. It scared Jimmy, and he began to back away, until a voice stopped him dead in his tracks. A beautiful, lilting voice that came from nowhere in particular but filled him completely. Wait… Who said that? Wait… The ripple was now at the shoreline, and what started as a tall, dark shadow rising from the shallow wavelet took on human features under the twilight. Wonderful features. She looked like his mother but more benign, with softer features and longer hair; sort of how she looked in those old photo books that he looked through occasionally. The thought of her warmed him, and intensified the happening. What are you? You can call me Anemone. She walked right up to him; not much taller than him when she stood right beside him, making Jimmy even more at-ease than he was already. Never could anyone have been more relaxed. She placed her wet hand on Jimmy’s face and stroked his cheek gently. You are an exquisite creature. What does exquisite mean? It means, that you are heavenly. I couldn’t have waited any longer for someone better. She leaned down and kissed him very gently on the lips, and then again. It wasn’t until she had kneeled over that Jimmy had noticed her breasts. He had never seen a naked woman before, but it didn’t bother him. In fact, he was completely at-ease with it, which confused him. It was as confusing as what was happening in his pants. She took his hand. Come with me. Where are we going? I want to show you something. She started walking into the water. Jimmy hesitated. Won’t I drown? I won’t let anything happen to you, Jimmy. She gently put her hand back on his face. Trust me. He did, fully.
“A man’s morality is tested when he’s asked to be a wingman on a friend’s blind date.”
One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
– James Russell Lowell
So many beautiful women passing him, he didn’t know where to direct his attention. He liked getting the attention back, even though he knew he wasn’t physically-desirable; it was still nice having these young, pretty faces smile back at him. If only he were more handsome. It took him forever to be able to smile back and now if only they came to him to help him complete the cycle. But he really didn’t want them to: honestly, he really didn’t know how old any of these girls actually were. There was a nice, tiny Filipina, with a blemish-free smile and an onion booty: has to be under fifteen. What about that tall, slender White girl with the amber hair down to her ass, with no tits and a flat back? Gorgeous, undeniably, but young. Obviously too young. But was she? The Friend had worked with women before who were underdeveloped: petite husks for the blossoming female underneath. So it wasn’t unheard of. But they were always taken, and never taken with the Friend. No, he was more the “dateable” type, his ex’s had told him: a man a woman ends with, and not part of the journey. He should believe them, since they all left him in the end anyway. No, he was contented with being sidelined. The girls on his computer could comfort him later. The mall was packed today. No telling why, must have just been one of those days, where the planets were in-alignment and everyone had money to spend, but no one seemed to be carrying around any shopping bags. A shopping mall bursting with the young & bountiful and no one was buying anything. Maybe we were all just here to scope ourselves out, be communally creepy to one-another, in the one public place where it was allowed. In the same way all these young girls kept looking in the Friend’s direction, a curiosity, burgeoning with emotion & development. It must be so easy for some of those guys, isn’t it? Just to roll up on someone half-their-age and be able to ignite that spark within their teenage will as easily as the opposite sex could to him, the flame burning hot & bright for the tight, chaste juvenile body. Was this what made the collective blood of the predators of the world boil for flesh? Someone who didn’t know any better? Someone with no frame-of-reference, no prior dick, no resumé? No experience meant no disappointment to the Creep. No one talking down to them, making them feel low for their inadequacies. Now, they could be the one in charge. Now, they were finally a man. The Friend had to jolt himself back to reality, lest he became stuck in the warren of his mind. He was here for a purpose. He was here, to help out his buddy, who walked beside his Friend with a faux-confidence one can only lather from a social entourage. The boy was nervous: he was nineteen and still a virgin. The Friend, who was a few years older than the boy he had met in College, had to reassure him there was nothing wrong with that: Hell, even he was a virgin till he was 20, although he was thankful this was no longer the case. The Friend could remember the conversation:
“A socially-challenged young man has a sexually-frustrating evening alone.”
He was a dirty Boy. Hot on the heels of his shift, he reclined in his death-trap on four wheels, cruising the back-streets at 110 k with his high-beams on riding up some poor helpless Honda’s ass, scratching, couldn’t stop scratching. His Mom reminded him yesterday, “Make the prescription!” And he’d tell her, “I know, I know, I know!” Something with his sweat. Couldn’t stop sweating and he couldn’t stop scratching now, itching the skin around the outside of the hairy part of his armpit as it reddened, swole-up, pimpled in real-time under his nails and damn it, this fucking itch is KILLING me! I can’t wait to get home, jump in a hot shower and give it Hell with my luffa. Through the front door he burst, stripping right down by the laundry room that sat parallel to the rental’s entrance, straight to his bareness, and scampered barefoot down the main hall to the bathroom. Music. That damn music again! It was his neighbour: his landlord’s 18-year-old daughter who had recently-graduated, occupying the suite next to his on the ground floor of the house they all shared. Blaring that Top-40 garbage at the maximum volume her little, pink, pig-shaped IPod dock could muster while singing at the top of her voice, the shower on, the water-heater – which sat in the wall between both suites – at full-tilt. He might not get any hot water now. Oh well, too late. And he wasn’t prepared for another hour of scratching while he would wait for her to finish showering and then wait for the hot water tank to fill back up again. He closed the bathroom door & kicked the mat so it blocked the gap at the bottom of the door, unplugged the night-light, turned on the shower to secure his place and sat on the toilet to take a big, fat shit. It was about damn time.
“Sparks ignite despite past schisms between a waitress and her customer.”
“Hey! I haven’t seen you in a while!” She still had a tray of food in her hand as she set it down on the hostess’ podium and gave the Boy a great, big hug. As much contact as he ever had with her in High School. I moved to the city, but I’m just back for the evening. “Well, that’s great! We can catch up! Here, I’ll show you to a table.” She picked up the tray and the Boy & his cohorts followed her to an empty booth, as she motioned she would be back in a bit.
“Hey, who’s that?” “Yeah, who’s the sexy waitress?” Just someone I knew from school.
In actuality, she was someone he had seen every day, when he closed his eyes and willed the memories to come on strong. She was a rabble-rouser. Fifteen-years-ago, when he was still living in this developer’s dream called a small town, she ran with the wrong groups and flirted with the worst kind of danger. When the Boy was in the parking lot of that same restaurant all those years prior, driving food deliveries just to make a dollar to move away, she was drinking from a paper bag just a few cars parallel with one of the Wretched: the corrupted group of Grade 13s who learned early-on how to reap to their advantage. Amy must have been fourteen-or-fifteen at the time but there she was, dancing to the techno music blaring from the car stereo and just barely able to keep standing. Her partner saw the Boy. “Hey, you want some of this?” Amy lifted her top. There were two tanned, young, B-cup breasts, bouncing up and down, the nipples stiff from the evening air. The Boy tried to keep face as he continued tallying up his tip-sheet, the Wretched throwing a half-empty beer can at his car before the Boy realized this was not a battle worth winning and drove away. The next day at school, he could remember Amy just across the hall from him at her locker, sheepishly looking over her shoulder at him, avoiding his gaze, embarrassed? Turned-on? Curious? He didn’t know. All he knew then was that the heavy layers she wore did a good job of covering up the exotic figure underneath. Forget it, she’s fourteen! Maybe even fifteen… but with the Rule-of-Sevens that still meant he should only be dating someone sixteen or older. What was the age-of-consent anyway? These questions kept him busy enough and by the time he graduated Amy became an evocation, her natural breasts carrying him through many a lonely night to come.
theory of a daskeman 