Shelly and I worked for the same progressive political organization, going door-to-door and fundraising. It was a demeaning job that attracted idealistic, aimless young people between college and real careers. It was a bonding experience, being dropped off in suburbia, knocking on total strangers’ doors and asking them for money, being rudely rejected twenty or thirty times a night. We all tended to hang out together, after work and before work and on weekends, drinking in the same bars, borrowing money from each other, crashing on each other’s beds and couches and floors, sleeping together.
It was an open secret that Shelly was hot for me; people had teased us about it and suggested a match. I smiled at this and pretended not to realize that they were not really joking. Once, at a party, I walked out of the bathroom through a darkened empty room and Shelly suddenly pushed me up against a wall and smooched me with surprising passion, her tongue snaking in my mouth. I didn’t exactly recoil, but I didn’t smooch back, either. She apologized hastily and said she was drunk. I told her not to apologize, don’t worry about it. The thing was, I genuinely liked Shelly: she was a kook, persnickety, raucous, and acerbic, both prickly and vulnerable. We’d even gone on a road trip to her parents’ house in Ottawa together. I just could not bring myself to sleep with her. I felt badly about it, but there was just no physical attraction there. She was too skinny and hard-edged, breastless and hipless and pasty. Instead I had a crush on Cali, who was flakier and more childish and demanding but had classically beautiful, delicate features, immaculate porcelain skin, and an appallingly hot little body. (Cali, in turn, loved Nick, a sculptor with tattoos and white-boy dreadlocks. And Nick loved heroin. It was the usual hopeless daisy chain of unrequited attraction.) Everybody knew I wanted to fuck Cali, too. Everybody knew everything about everybody else. So it was understood that I was, as the suburbanites we canvassed always said, Not Interested.
Nevertheless Shelly and I continued to do quite a lot of drinking and flirting and palling around together. I knew she wanted me and even though I didn’t want her I still liked it. Of course I liked it. I was a nerdy kid in high school and still, in my early twenties, wasn’t used to being considered handsome. I enjoyed the novelty of being the one who was coveted, fawned over and adored. One morning, after another late night of drinking, Shelly and I woke up side by side in my bed. We hadn’t had sex; mine must just have been the most convenient place for her to pass out. Shelly got up and made coffee for us, and brought me a mug in bed. She sat in a chair across the tiny room from me, and we lazed around talking, trying to piece together the previous night’s adventures and how exactly we’d ended up here, bitching extravagantly about our self-inflicted symptoms, wallowing in that languorous, self-pitying luxury that is the special province of the young and hung over. Gradually our brains, still fuzzed and disordered from drink, got all jazzed on caffeine, giving us bad ideas and the energy to pursue them.
“Do you know any hangover cures?” she groaned.
“The only one that ever works for me,” I said frankly, “is sex.” This is true, a neurochemical quirk of mine; when I’m horribly hung over, I wake up horny. I have jerked off eight times in one day in this condition. The distraction of fantasy and the brief endorphin hit is the only respite from the physical wretchedness and free-floating shame. This is the only time I allow certain depraved fantasies to drift through my mind uncensored. Whatever works. Pretty much anything but the dog is fair game. It’s a special occasion, a holiday from inhibition.
“If I didn’t have company, I’d just masturbate,” I said. “Hmm,” said Shelly, with a rueful, don’t-let-me-stop-you arching of the eyebrows. We laughed and passed it off, pretending, by mutual tacit consent, that this idea was obviously out of the question, to spare us both embarrassment. We let it drop and considered some other alleged cures, all of them ineffective: aspirin and lots of water the night before, of course, which we’d forgotten; marijuana, which I didn’t have; spicy food, the thought of which made us feel ill; exercise, which, like, yeah, right. There was, of course, the sure-fire Hair of the Dog, in the form of mimosas or bloody marys or early afternoon beers, but this inevitably led either to the dreaded eight P.M. hangover or another late night of drinking and an even more catastrophic cumulative hangover the next day. Ugh. If only there was something.
Finally Shelly said, “Well, why don’t you masturbate, and I’ll watch?” She said it in the most matter-of-fact, oh-for-Pete’s-sake, let’s-get-it-over-with-already manner. “It’ll make you feel better, and I’ve always wanted to watch a man come,” she explained. As though it all made perfect sense.
“Well, but you must’ve seen men come when you were having sex with them,” I protested. Why was I arguing? I was just buying time, I guess, absorbing that she’d gone ahead and boldly suggested this thing out loud.
“Yeah, but you can’t really concentrate and pay attention when you’re in the middle of sex, you’ve got so much going on yourself,” she said. It was as though it were just a matter of clinical curiosity. It could be anyone. Why not me? I’d be doing her a favor. Everyone would win. It was an absurd conversation. Like most conversations between men and women preceding sex, it was all pretense. As I got over my initial reflex of embarrassment and actually considered it, I got a familiar sick giddy thrill in my stomach, the feeling you get when, as a kid, you jump off an embankment on a dare and go into free-fall for a second or two. It is one of the rarest feelings in my life—I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve felt it--and maybe my favorite: the realization that I’m going to do it. I’m really about to do this illicit, crazy thing I never thought I’d do.
“Okay,” I said, trembling. “I’ll do it.”
“Great,” she said, controlling her reaction, acting as if this was no big deal. “How do you want to do this?”
We negotiated the specifics. Shelly came over and sat up in the bed next to me, with her back propped against the wall on a pillow. She grabbed the nearest book—a paperback of Dracula, I’m afraid—and said she’d just read and pretend not to notice what I was doing at first, so I could get comfortable with it. She’d only start watching me surreptitiously, unobtrusively, once I was into it and oblivious to her.
I can’t remember what I was wearing. Is it possible I was already naked? This does seem like the kind of thoughtless thing I would’ve done back then, slept casually nude next to a girl who was clearly aching to fuck me. Yes, maybe I was abusing my sexual power, casually flaunting myself at her. So let’s say I just pushed the bedcovers down to my thighs so she could see me and watch what I was going to do to myself. I couldn’t tell whether it was the cool air I was feeling on my naked penis or just the tickling sensation of her eyes on it. I breathed out. I was extremely self-conscious at first about my little masturbatory idiosyncracies, all the automatic habits dating from earliest adolescence that no one else had ever seen. “I need a little lubrication,” I explained, half-apologetically, and gathered saliva in my mouth and slowly licked my whole right hand, from palm to fingertips with a broad, flattened tongue, to coat it with a clear, slick layer of spit. A lick for the thumb, too. I hoped this was not disgusting. I wrapped my hand lightly around my erect penis, very awkwardly aware that I was Touching Myself in front of someone else. I stole a nervous glance up at Shelly. She kept her eyes on the page, feigning absorption, all but whistling nonchalantly. I cupped my balls with my left hand, as I always do, only a little embarrassed—see, this is how I do it--and let my thighs open slightly. I started to stroke myself. Oh, it felt good. I was so aroused by the idea of what I was doing that the first touch of my own fingers was startlingly electric. I kept my eyes closed and kept going, getting into it, doing this thing I’d done so many times alone, trying to forget anyone was watching. Mm, it felt good. Yes.
After a while I risked a look up at Shelly again. She was looking at me now. She wasn’t watching my hands on my genitals, the way most men would’ve watched a woman masturbating; her eyes were on my face. She wasn’t smirking or looking lascivious; her face was utterly still and serious, like the faces of patrons at strip clubs, almost awed, giving me her complete attention. The sight thrilled me. I smiled at her slightly and then closed my eyes again, relaxing into it and concentrating on what I was doing for her. I quickly licked my hand once more. I moved into the strokes now, lifting my hips, beginning to fuck my own closed fist, squeezing myself just right. I cradled my full scrotum fondly. I loved this, being a sexual object, being watched and wanted. I loved performing for her. I had watched myself masturbating in a mirror before—oh come on, who hasn’t?—and I knew how I looked, lean and toned, the smooth muscles and tendons of my forearm shifting and flexing with the rhythm of pumping, my meager bicep actually bulging, the muscle walls over my ribs rippled with tension. I kicked the blanket down off the edge of the bed so I was completely exposed. I wanted her to see everything. I spread my legs wider. I ran my left hand up over my stomach, through the hair on my chest, over my nipples, hard pebbles now, and back down, a playful swirl of the fingers over the insides of my thighs before closing them around my testicles again, hefting their gentle weight tenderly. I was showing off.
My sensation plateaued, and I was anxious that I might be a hair too self-conscious and inhibited to come for her. What kind of a humiliation---or was it an insult?—would that be, not to be able to come in front of a girl? I tried to get off on thinking of it as a challenge, a contest, a purely physical feat I was going to perform for her to prove myself, like opening a rusted-shut jar lid or carrying her up some stairs or pissing the farthest of all the guys. I was really jerking off now, in a quick, businesslike, mechanical motion, keeping up the steady beat and friction and hoping the sheer physical stimulation would do its job, let my body take over, a machine in good working order doing what it was made for. There was something primitive about it, macho and childish, like showing off while playing doctor—hey, look what I can make mine do! Cool, huh? (Maybe this juvenile pleasure has something to do with the popularity of toy spaceships and robots that fire little plastic missiles.) As soon as I felt the first faint, unmistakable tingling of that premonitory sensation roiling up from my balls into my abdomen, I knew with a rush of excitement and relief and pride that it was going to happen after all—I’m going to come in front of her, I’m going to let her see it--and that thrill of knowledge suddenly propelled me up over the edge. I stole one last quick glance at her through my slitted eyes. She wasn’t looking at my body, of course; her eyes were looking steadily back into mine. Looking back at her, I came. My eyes squeezed shut and my brain went black. I arched up on my shoulders and heels. My muscles must have been taut and quivering. My abdomen clenches so tightly when I come it gives me a momentary sixpack. I must have been so gorgeous to her. I don’t know if I made any noise, cried out or moaned or whimpered. I know I came hard. I felt hot semen pattering on my stomach and imagined it arcing high over my abdomen. I hoped I shot an impressive distance for her.
Immediately after orgasming, my body wilted: my legs drew up and together and my shoulders folded inward, helplessly curling into an almost fetal posture on my back. I put a hand over my eyes, coming back around from the endorphin blackout. I was still holding myself in my other hand; the viscous warmth of my semen oozed over my knuckles. I was suddenly mortified. I couldn’t believe I’d just done what I’d just done.
“I’m incredibly embarrassed,” I said, half-laughing.
“Oh, no, don’t be!” she said. “Thank you! I’ve always wanted to see a guy come, and now I have.” As casually if I’d taken her to play Skee-Ball for the first time.
Like a girl who’s been violated and feels sullied, I had a sudden impulse to take a bath. Shelly said sure, go ahead. As I sat in the hot bath, dazed and freaked out, uncertain exactly how I felt about what I’d just done, Shelly spoke to me through the door. Her voice didn’t sound casual now.
“Dan?” she said. “I just wanted to thank you for trusting me enough to share that with me. For letting me see something that intimate.” Her voice was tender. “The expression of pure joy on your face… the little tears forming in the corners of your eyes…”
“Oh my God,” I said, holding my head.
“…were beautiful. And I wanted to say that any girl who gets to see that… with you… would be very lucky.”
“Thank you, Shelly,” I said.
Shelly and I never slept together. In fact, she ended up marrying another of our co-workers. At the reception she loudly told people that she had a crush on me first. She got domestic and bored, a stay-at-home housewife in suburbia without interesting friends. For a while she would call me once every two weeks like clockwork, wanting me to play the role of her eccentric, creative friend and be funny, entertain her. But the thing was, I had work to do, and she had nothing interesting to say to me anymore. She told me they were putting up new eggplant wallpaper, or buying something called a Hoosier, or building a fish pond in the back yard. I had absolutely nothing to say to this information. I couldn’t imagine why she would think that I or anyone else would possibly want to know these things. She and her husband had twin sons, about whose complex and minor disorders she fretted histrionically. Eventually I started screening her calls.
But once in a while when I masturbate, I still imagine Shelly watching me. I wish, now, that I had let her touch me while I did it. I sometimes imagine this. “Touch me,” I say, as I build up to my orgasm. “Where?” she asks, still wanting to respect the limits of the game. “Anywhere,” I tell her, breathless and impatient, getting close. “Anywhere you want. Just please touch me.” I close my eyes and wait to feel where she will place her hand.
**Thanks to my dear friend for letting me post this. I can't help being proud by association.**
