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 2 ...stay, dont leave me, Mama, because it's getting so hard...  Mama
   Okay, let me back up a bit.  Technically, legally, it wasn't a divorce,
because we were never married.  But after three months of bliss and fifteen
months of steadily maturing misery, it felt like a divorce.  When Lilly
finally walked out on me, the day after my 30th birthday, I was a mumbling
mess; emotionally damaged, with a newly minted sense of my worthlessness, I
knew that Lilly had been my last chance at a relationship.  In the years
since, my self-esteem just kept finding new depths to sink to, losing me
first one job, then another, until I finally ran out of jobs to lose.
   I hadn't pursued Lilly, I hadn't even really known her before I found
her one frigidly ugly, below-zero January night, passed out in an alley
behind the Babylon lounge.  We'd been in the same graduating class in high
school; she was one of a dozen or so girls I'd nutured a pathetic crush on
from afar.  Passing in the halls at school, or seeing her sometimes at the
mall, I'd wished for the fortitude to approach her, knowing I never would.
I had no idea whether she even knew I existed, and that's as far as it ever
got.
   Now here I was, ten years later, faced with the slowly growing, shocking
warmth of recognition as I made my way through the dimly lit alley behind
the bar.  I learned later that she had just been dumped by her boyfriend
and had chosen getting hammered as her means of coping.  It looked like she
had been urinating in the alley; there was a puddle underneath her, and
although she had managed to get her pants and underwear down to do it, she
had passed out before being able to pull them back up.  As I walked up to
where she lay, a wave of equal parts pity, fascination and prurience swept
over me, with pity rapidly surging to the fore and nearly knocking me over.
Standing over her there in the darkness, with the sound of "Mama" by
Genesis seeping through the cracked window above the back door, I knew I
couldn't leave her in that alley to freeze to death.  I briefly considered
the idea of going into the crowded, noisy, smoke-filled bar to try to find
help, but I was afraid to leave her unattended while I did.  As gingerly as
I could, I pulled up her underwear and pants; she never stirred once as I
did so, seemingly dead to the world.  My official excuse that I have
convinced myself to believe is that there must have been some sort of
Florence Nightingale / wounded bird aspect to our encounter, which is what
prompted me to carry her to my car and put her in the passenger seat; and
with no clear idea of what to do with her, started back to my apartment. 
She woke up halfway back and wondered aloud where we were going; it seemed
that wondering who I was or why she was in my car weren't tremendously
important to her at the moment.  "Back to my place," I had said, wondering
at my audacity with just picking up a near stranger off the street, my
utter lack of judgment in bringing her home, and a growing sense of
trepidation at her reaction to having been picked up like that.  I knew I
should add, 'but now that you're awake, you can tell me where to take you,'
and I was about to do just that, when she interrupted me with a hand on my
leg.  "Pull over," she slurred, "I'm gonna puke." I'm not sure, but I think
it must have been right there, in a filthy patch of snow in front of the
Mersey Avenue fire station, as I held back her long blonde hair while she
emptied her stomach into the gutter, that I fell in love with her.  When we
got back to my place, I half-supported, half-carried her up the steps, and
I had to prop her up against the wall while I unlocked the door, pinning
her in place with my knee to check her unreliable balance.  I tried to
clean her up the best I could, but when she started complaining that her
legs were freezing, I could see she really was shivering pretty hard and
needed to get out of her damp things.  I steered her into the bathroom and
sat her on the toilet, where she tried to undo her pants and found the task
beyond her.  "Yer gon' havva do it," she said, looking around perplexed and
then recogizing what kind of room she was in.  "C'n I take a bath?" she
said so matter-of-factly that it struck me as hilarious, and I was choking
on my laughter as I told her I'd run one, but that I was worried about
leaving her alone in the tub, in case she passed out again.  "'sokay, you
gimme bath, 'm too drunk to wash anyway" she finished.  So, after starting
the water running, I bent over her and, trying to avert my eyes like a
gentleman (and failing miserably), stripped off her slush- and urine-soaked
pants and panties, then lowered her into a hot bath (only pulling off her
shirt and bra after the bath was over).  I washed her gently with a bar of
sandalwood soap that had been sitting unopened in the medicine cabinet for
months, taking care to avoid any areas that were too private.  I left her
side only long enough to stretch out her shirt and bra over the back of the
toilet to dry out.  Hoping she wouldn't mind that I was using my own
toothbrush, I helped her brush her teeth (she spit out the toothpaste in
the tub as she was getting out), then I wrapped her in a towel and laid her
gently in my bed.  I was turning to go lay down on the couch when she
grabbed my shirt and pulled me back to her, demanding to know if I thought
she was ugly.  I could tell she was still more drunk than sober, and I was
unsure of how to answer.  Finally, I just settled for the simple truth. 
"No," I said, "I think you're beautiful." As she tasted the sincerity and
longing in my voice, it finally occurred to her to wonder who I was.  "Do I
know you?" she asked, but with a curious stress on the word 'you', as if it
was really more of a statement that I was somebody different than the
brutish hogs who had made her life so evil.
   "My name is Brent," I said, and she held out her hand, saying "Pleaz to
meetcha Bren', 'm Lilly." I grasped her hand to shake it, intending to tell
her about my crush on her from high school.  She held onto my hand and
squeezed it significantly.  "I was in bad trouble, wasn' I?" she said
softly, and for a few seconds, I saw her as she was ten years before, the
way I remembered her from our school days.  "An' ya save me, dinya?" I
nodded slowly and opened my mouth, but she pulled me down onto the bed
before I could say anything.
   "Yer my knight in shiny armor, aincha?  Ya pick me up when the goddam
bassard throw me down.  Think I owe you one, Bren' ol' buddy," she
murmured, pulling off the towel, "and I wanna pay up.  Here ya go, pal,
help y'self," this last said with a lyrical wave of her arm to indicate I
should start in on her as if she were a buffet laid out for my benefit.
   I know I turned red staring at her naked body, at the almost invisibly
fine hair beneath her arms and the blond muff around her crotch, at her
beautiful, round breasts; now that my peeping wasn't being done
surreptitiously, but out in the open with her express consent, it was more
that I could handle.  "I can't, I really, I can't, Lilly," I stammered,
"you might feel differently when you sober up."
   "Mister goddamn boyscout Brent," she laughed, without the slightest
trace of heat or anger, "'s okay, rilly.  Sher, I'm drung, but I know th'
score.  Now don't get me mad, boyfren, doff the duds and screw me good and
proper." I didn't know how to tell her that, as a 28-year-old virgin, I was
terrified of insulting or amusing her with my clumsy fumbling ignorance. 
She was so damned insistent, though.  She finally grabbed me by the waist
of my pants and started to take them off, so I backed off and finished the
job, dazed at my lack of shame in undressing in front of her, and trembling
now with anticipation and wanting.  She pulled me on top of her and started
to kiss my neck and chest, and I lit up with the sudden realization that if
I just followed her lead and did what she did, I wouldn't have to worry
about how to perform.  It seemed to work for a bit, but it wasn't long
before she pulled back and gazed at me unsteadily.  "You haven' done this
very mush, have you?" she asked with a genuine smile of affection.  I
couldn't say or do anything, I just hung my head and wondered how to
apologize.  "'s okay," she laughed, laying a hand on my chest, "'s rilly
easy, I'll teash you."
   "I don't have any condoms," I said miserably.  She smiled again, "Hey,
'at's okay Brenty, I doan think I c'n make enny babies, so just rilax and
'njoy th' ride.  Doan worry, babe, we'll take it nice and slow." And we
did.
   I must have slept like a dead man.  When I woke up, I realized I had
neglected to take out my contact lenses before falling asleep.  As I
wandered through the apartment wrapped in the towel I had used on Lilly,
trying to rub some moisture back into my eyes so I could focus, I realized
I was alone.  Half a pan of scrambled eggs sat cold on the stove; the egg
crumbs and fork by the sink conjured an image of Lilly standing over the
sink eating breakfast out of the pan.  On the table was a note scribbled on
the back of an old envelope, "U R a damn hard man to wake up.  Thanks
Bernie, IOU 4 saving me, call 4 payoff.  Called GF to pick me up.  Lil",
along with a phone number.  It must have been late in the afternoon before
I could get my face to stop smiling.  I could have sworn that when I looked
at my feet, they were definitely not even touching the ground.
   It took me several years to call her; or, that's what it felt like
anyway, forcing myself to wait all day before calling, yet scared to death
at the possible outcome.  I wanted to tell her so many things, but I was
sure I'd die before I had the chance to get any of it out.  When I finally
did call, the only response I got was the answering machine.  "Hi, this is
Lilly.  I'm not here right now, at least as far as YOU know, so why don't
you just leave a message and we'll say I listened to it when I 'get home'",
and I was amused and enamoured of the way I could hear her putting
quotation marks around the words 'get home'.  "Um, hi, this is, uh, Brent,
I, uh, uh, I, uh, spent the night with you last night," (God!  Idiot!  Can
you be less smooth?) "and you left me your number, so, so uh, I just wanted
to tell you how wonderful it was, and wondering, if you're not busy, if
you'd like to get together and do something," (hah!  yeah, right, like
fucking each other's brains out), "because I can't stop thinking about you
and just wanted to see if you were free." I was about to add my phone
number and ask her to call me, when she picked up the phone.
   "Hi, did you say your name is Brent?" she asked, and I made an
affirmative noise.  "Brent, what happened last night?  I remember a couple
of things, but most of it's a blank." 'OhmyGod.  She doesn't know.  She
doesn't know she devirginized me,' I thought, feeling suddenly light-headed
and sitting down forcefully on the couch.
   "Well," I started, "you were pretty, uh, sick," (drunk) "when I found
you, uh, passed out behind the Babylon.  I remembered you from high school,
I wanted to help you but I didn't know if you were with friends or what had
happened to you, I just knew you needed help, so I brought you home and,
uh, cleaned you up and, uh, put you to bed, and...  uh, then we, uh...  we
had, uh...  we made, uh..."
   "Yeah, I remember that part now," she said with a suddenness that told
me she had just realized what happened.  "OhmyGod, that was your first
time, wasn't it?  Oh God, I'm so sorry!  Please forgive me!  Brent, are you
in love with me?"
   I was too astounded and dazed to know how to answer.  I tried to say,
'No, Lilly, I'm not in love with you, I'm sorry,' but all that came out
was, "Yes, I think so." Heavy sigh from Lilly.  Couple more heavy sighs. 
Finally, "Okay, well, you'd better come on over.  We'll just have to let it
run its course, I guess.  I do remember that I owe you my life, Brent, so
we might as well get that into the deal right now." I puzzled over this
when she said it; it wasn't until years later, when this conversation
emerged from the depths of my memory, that I realized what she meant was
that as long as she felt she still owed me ten or twelve more mercy fucks
for saving her, and as long as I was in love with her (and she was certain
I'd fall out of love with her sooner rather than later), we might as well
play house.  She was wise, but she was wrong about one thing: I never fell
out of love with her; not really, anyway.
   She moved in after the first week.  The two girls she'd been staying
with let me know with hints and sideways comments that they fully expected
her to move back with them before too long, but I didn't see it.  The first
two months danced by like ashes from a winter bonfire.  We had sex every
day, sometimes two or three times a day; even when she had her period, she
still insisted on getting me off with her hand.  I think that, for the
first month, she thought she was helping me make up for lost time, and for
the second month, she was trying to glut me, to get me so totally satiated
with sex that I got tired of it; but in the end, all she was doing was
feeding my multiple addictions to her; sexual, mental, spiritual,
emotional. The more we were together, the more of her I wanted.  The third
month was "the month of new stuff", as Lilly introduced a variety of
techniques to our encounters.  We got very heavily into oral, then it was
shot glasses and hot wax, with a chaser of one tantric position after
another.  She persuaded me to perform anal sex on her (and that was a
lesson all to itself; it was also the first time we used a condom), and
even moved me a little of the way along the path toward bondage and S/M. 
We never got too far in that direction, and toward the end of that third
month, our sex life settled back to what it had been, then dropped below
the horizon.  First there was a pause of 2 days, then 4, then it was a
week; and by the end, when Lilly finally left me, it had been 3 months
since we'd made love.  Her goodbye is burned into my mind forever.  Her
folks had moved south a few years prior, and she was going to head south to
live with them for a while, and she told me in no uncertain terms that this
was the end of the road for us.  I drove her to the bus depot, and as we
sat side by side in the lobby, massaging each other's thighs and waiting
for her bus to arrive, she found she couldn't deal with the feeling of
imminent death radiating from me; so she took me by the hand and pulled me
into the women's room.  "One more for the good times," she said with a
devil's grin as she backed into a stall and dropped her pants, and I
mounted and "serviced" her, as she enjoyed calling it, for what I knew was
the last time.  It was the first time I'd ever had sex with tears in my
eyes; I had no idea it wouldn't be the last.  
  
rj_chapter02