All the Dirty Parts Read online

  —I helped it along, I guess. I made, I don’t know, the space where it could—

  —You forced it.

  —Stop saying that! What does it mean when she has me touch her? And if I move my hands down? Clamping her legs shut, that means stop, that’s rapey? Or it means,

  —Don’t say anything,

  —yes right there that spot? If her legs are so tight together that I can’t move my legs?

  —You could ask her, Cole. You could open your mouth.

  But our mouths, I can’t tell her, are pressed so together then. Kissing the whole time, and then, and it hasn’t been a month, her legs just slip open like an exhale.

  • •

  —Give me the details.

  —I’m not your fucking porn, Alec.

  —C’mon c’mon. You love telling me.

  I do and I don’t, but I tell him. —She held my hand still when I put my finger inside her. Wait, wait, she said, and then I felt it. Her moving around me, like a glove, a shy creature. She moved more. It was like a party trick but it made her come so hard to do it.

  —Jesus. That’s hot.

  —I know.

  —I’m hard just hearing about it.

  I am too, of course. —Hey don’t tell me that, dude. That’s private.

  • •

  She was the one who taught me how to do it, gently gently running my hands on the sides of her breasts. Thank you, Amelie. I use that on everybody and everybody loves it.

  • •

  Moving up her body so my cock is between her breasts and Antoinette half laughs half frowns. —Every guy wants this.

  —Well, it’s kind of a natural idea.

  —I wish I wasn’t a C.

  —I like them.

  —Well, duh.

  She’s looking out the window now. Her trophies on the windowsill, Antoinette almost made nationals last year. Still straddling her I feel shitty. —But Cole, that’s not what they’re there for.

  • •

  Antoinette liked her nipples really sucked on. Allison liked them almost pinched. Abby, don’t touch them. Arya, bite them, but I could never bite them the right way. Always hot, and of course whatever floats the boat, but sometimes, my hand slapped or my ear tugged on, it’s, ladies, have a conference and decide. Boys did. We like our cocks sucked, ask anyone.

  • •

  —You found it right away.

  They always say guys can never find it, that it’s hard to find. The clitoris is not hard to find. I mean, it’s not like sometimes it’s behind her heel or in your desk drawer. Go to where you think it is and root around and you will for sure know when you’re right. And porn helps. Find a shaved girl saying “lick my clit” and where he licks, that’s the clit. It’s educational.

  • •

  I’m seventeen now, and no real girl has really told me to ejaculate on her face. Maybe it’ll never happen, I told Alec. We’ve watched a couple blowjobs together, or not together but at the same time, me in my room and he in his, always slightly weird.

  —Pornography lied to us.

  —I’m writing my congressman.

  —OK but let’s watch another one first.

  • •

  —That guy.

  —Yeah.

  —I mean, that seriously fucking asshole guy.

  I am just around the corner when I hear this. It’s Abby talking with a friend of hers who’s just brought the news that I’m seeing someone now. They’re leaning against the school right where the brick is painted to cover graffiti. I am by the garbage cans, frozen listening.

  Abby’s friend says it again. —Yeah.

  —I could fucking kill him,

  and part of me wants to round the corner and say, what is it, exactly, that makes me what she says I am? She’s the one who said it just wasn’t working out, and left an envelope in my locker stuffed with little trinkets I bought her. And then some weeks later, yes, I’m with another girl, instead of, what, begging for her to come back outside her window playing some song? Guy I am, OK, but fucking asshole guy I am not. But really I’m not thinking all this. Really when she says I could fucking kill him I can hear her voice a couple months back, fresh from orgasm on her dad’s living room floor, and my mouth sticky and happy, her exhausted grin at me like a warm breeze, her legs bent out lazy just like I know they are sitting with her friend this second right now. You’re killing me is what she said.

  • •

  Some nights it’s forgotten for a bit. A big dinner heavy in my belly maybe, reading for Modern Lit draws me in, or a test worrying me enough that I stay downstairs at the table, dad at the other end shuffling folders around from work. Quiet, my mom on the phone with her feet up, laundry piled in a basket to be folded. Or homework’s done and gone, stretched out looking together at the same show, the big screen flicking at our eyes, laughing at something the famous guy says, night outside, streetlamps on the sidewalk with their nothing to see here. Everyone’s phones silent, leaning on the pillows on the sofa like it will never hit. And then it could be the pillow, some small rub above the knee, a friction with something against something against me. Some girl in the show, some joke that zips it alive. I can blink it away for maybe thirty seconds tops, five minutes if I’m being talked at. Afraid to make a display, standing up and stretching, slow and fake when I’m already bounding upstairs in my head. And then I am bounding upstairs, my eyes full of flesh already, so it’s like I don’t even know if the screen’s actually alive with it yet. Like a creature uncoiling from an egg, half-awake and all-hungry, the tug like an outboard motor sputtering me into the lake of sex, the family downstairs like a bear trap on my leg, as I’m excited alive and moving and very, very wanting to fuck.

  Lately my favorites have the shittiest music, why is that, so I mute the stuff they give me and soundtrack it myself. It’s all worked out, I move automatic to get ready. The links are hid in a place marked boring, although no one will check my computer. It only had to happen once, a quick shrieking hey! when I was fourteen, for my mother to now always always knock and wait for me, flinging on my loosest pants if I need to, answering and for her never to say anything like you look a little flushed, honey or what’s wrong you’re out of breath or if I didn’t know better I’d say you were pretty close to about to come before I knocked and spoiled it for a little just to ask if you would have some popcorn if I made some. Nonetheless I tip my backpack sideways in front of the door so if it’s opened there will be a little time-buying distraction crash. Cole, why do you always leave your bag where anyone could trip on it, is it because you have a setup you do whenever you need to get yourself off? Music sounds more harmless anyway, to anyone pausing outside my door, than the shuffling and nothing when I listen to the moans and dirty talk and fuck-me-harder screams through headphones on with the cord running down my bare chest against my slightly desperate beat-beating heart. Thump thump let’s go on an adventure, Cole. It’s nine P.M., let’s watch something.

  The best song for it recently is Hello Girls, it’s by the guy, everybody knows the one, who used to be in that other thing, a party song quiet at the edges, a little lonely and of course horny, which is where I’m at. It’s not a problem, which is how so many people—clergy onscreen, clingy adults—worry at it. It’s not interfering or taking anything else over. It’s separate from the rest of the hustle-bustle boredom that is everywhere from wake up you’ll miss the bus to close your eyes it’s a school night. It’s like a bathroom to excuse yourself to, a corner of the house I’m stuck in, a train stop for my brain, it’s just a box I need to get into by myself unless, you know, you’re someone who will take my hand and lead me out of here to a better offer. Otherwise, of course, I will boot this up and watch the screens of it happening. Tap on the keys and the floodgates open bright and wet. Hello, girls. Hello, the clothing ripped off, the mouths kissing at it like they’re trying to swallow an apple whole, the girl fierce and moaning all thirsty or, just as hot, nervous and unsure as the man, undeniab
le and strong, unzipping already, moves to push her down. It is not real. Nothing to do with it. What it is, what is obvious, is fucking hot. Try blonde, redhead, curly brown hair, a braid or a wig, white girls pale or freckly, every shade of black girl, hello Asian, Latina or maybe just tan, try a girl with so much makeup you can’t tell what her skin is like, try someone with a big ass climbing up on the hideous sofa to ask for it. Try two girls with their toy cocks rolling over the bed. Try the man holding her ears so he can fuck her mouth, or is it too violent, just try it and see. I rub myself over my pants until they’re off, inside out with the socks lagging out of the cuffs, or I will end up naked with only socks on my feet like an idiot. Try the girl on all fours, try the man turned over, try two men holding the girl’s legs open so the third can be satisfied. Fake wives, fake lovers, fake babysitters, fake sluts actually fucking. Try it all, the screen offers. My cock a tent in my boxers, finally naked when one angle, one scene, one girl is the signal that it’s time to go for broke. Strip off the last of it and I am as nude and excited as the day I was born. Try me, looking at my own cock trembling thick, almost a shame to touch it, an impossible move not to. This is the night in my room, and if it sounds dangerous, if you have decided it’s sleazy, let me tell you it is a goddamn joy, the relentless wide-open seething tussle of all these girls helping me get off, as much as I want, as loud as I dare, free and wild and hard and happy in the juice and the dirt, until like the universe it’s over with a bang and a whimper, and I close down every scene still thumping from it, the flesh looking sillier with each passing second, boxers thrown on for emergencies, rolling back my toes unclenching and the sock or the tissue or just my hand and belly sticky with the ending, eyes closed or on the ceiling with a grin or a grimace trying to gauge if I want, if I need it more, before I turn in and sleep it off, the song on its maybe third repeat. Hello, girls.

  • •

  Opening my eyes when I’m kissing her, can’t say why, just because it’s beautiful to look at her face close up. And then she opens her eyes too. It’s a thing we’re doing together, her open eyes and mine, both here, both looking. Starry sky, wide over her head when she takes her shirt off. Crickets in the grass. Her dark skin, the bra a shadow over her like a cancellation. Humidity making the kisses wetter, my hands slippery flippers trying to open the stupid condom wrapper. The grass so soaked we have to pat ourselves dry a little with the sweatshirt. My eyes straining to see more, her hands straining too, on my legs. And I’m inside her. It’s hot. The most fantastic thing, the two of us in the great wide-open night.

  • •

  We’re sending each other pictures of girls. Most of them they took themselves. Toothbrushes, hairdryers on the sink in front of the mirror as they get their lips pouty, put one leg up to show everything. Ridiculous tan lines sometimes, bright white tits like those coconut pastry balls we’d buy in sixth grade. Their boyfriends put them up to it, and then put them up here, in revenge after the breakup, for us to get hot looking at. We’re playing who would you rather.

  —Her.

  —The blonde.

  —You always like blondes.

  —With an ass like that, yeah.

  —Wait, there was a good ass. Here.

  —Well maybe from behind so I wouldn’t see her face.

  —OK, her for sure, instead.

  —Yeah.

  —Or, wait.

  And then I’m looking, fuck you Alec, at a picture of the President of the United States.

  • •

  Abby was always scared of the condoms afterwards. She wouldn’t touch them and she wouldn’t throw them out in her house, in case her snoopy mom brush-cleared the wastebasket. So afterwards we’d walk around the neighborhood with little cloudy bundles, eggs of damp latex all tissued up, so delicate in my hand in my pocket like the baby we were trying to avoid. Nighty-night. Go to sleep in this trashcan outside the sandwich place.

  • •

  —You know you’re a good dancer, right, Cole? You’re obviously comfortable in your own body.

  —Well, it’s an amazing body.

  Alice shoves me, and then gives me a long look.

  —What?

  —There’s a part of your dancing I don’t like.

  —I can take criticism of my dancing technique.

  —Stop doing it with so many other girls. I’m your girlfriend. Dance with me.

  • •

  It says next to Amateur Dorm Blow Job that thirty-five thousand people have watched it. Of course, like one thousand are me over and over.

  • •

  —What do you mean casual?

  —I don’t know. Like, not married.

  —Cole, are you seeing someone else?

  —No.

  —Do you want to?

  —I don’t know.

  —You don’t know.

  —I’m just trying to say what casual is.

  —Let’s talk in person.

  —I can come over?

  —No, call me.

  —I can’t come over?

  —I’m not in the mood, Cole. I’m upset. Do you get that?

  • •

  Dammit, now against the wall her mouth is all over that guy Ada used to go with. Anna, and why not me, after the conversations I’ve had with you, flirty and at different times? You were not at all anytime interested, and now you picked him? I mean we’re basically the same height, that guy and me. He even used to run on the team, we’d get each other’s same sweatshirts mixed up. The only thing he has I don’t have is the two of them kissing right now.

  • •

  Checkup time, and my doctor wants to talk about being sexual active, about sexual activity, about three more phrases they taught him to say instead of so, are you fucking. —Is there something you want to discuss with me?

  I want to say, how about that girl in the waiting room? With the long hair?

  • •

  The flare-up, my fault, OK. Wondering if this will go quick or how it will go. If she can get over whatever it is to get over. And then the breakup. Her friends around her like watchdog bodyguards. Getting over me. Nothing on the phone. OK, OK. Official status. So it’s broken up. Dry spell, hang with Alec for a bit. The exhaustion of knowing you’ll have to begin again, climb from base camp, start all over with the girl you already noticed a little bit before, saved in your pocket for later.

  • •

  New semester, right away Art is a place for me. Five other boys only, two gay, one more gay but not knowing it yet, all pals-y with the girls, no competition there.

  Spanking new sketchbooks. Mr. Ryotis shows slides of nudes, everyone nodding all serious about the light. The light is beautiful. It’s shining on an ass, also beautiful. Painters figured it out, and so smart right under everyone’s noses. How many years before I can get someone to pose for me? College? I like the actual part where I draw, too.

  • •

  Showered so many times at Alec’s but the water pressure is weird, and the angle. It’s either slapping down on your dick or your dick is totally out of the spray ignored and cold. You cannot masturbate in there, and I always wonder if this frustrates Alec, although I guess, I know, he mostly does it in his room by the computer.

  And I do it sitting up on my bed now usually. Leaning on pillows. Talking to him sometimes.

  • •

  Nothing on Saturday night, just like Friday, so I’m back with Alec in his room calling up a movie, wondering if we both know we’re going to say it’s boring in an hour, and watch porn again. Or if only I just know. Our shoes are off. He burps, which is like always, but then when I catch him looking at me twenty minutes into some stupid car chase, it’s something else. We turn it off.

  • •

  Alec sounds a little hoarse. The girls are almost slithering on the screen. We both keep shifting, our jeans crackling, weird and hot to watch it together. More weird than hot, or the other way, I don’t know. He asks,

  —You think there are really girls
anything like that?

  but the girls are right there.

  • •

  Alec makes a noise when he comes. I don’t know what you’d call it. Not a grunt, not a moan. Nothing gross. Actually the word I guess I feel, I guess, is cute. I reach to hand him a tissue but he just wipes up with the T-shirt I have handy for me, I want this not to be happening and it feels so good, prickly on my skin when I think about it, and fucking hot when I don’t.

  • •

  He’s a little bigger. This is, shut up, something you have to notice.

  • •

  C’mon is all Alec says. C’mon. We’re both in boxers. He reaches in first. His hand on my cock is the exact right weight, the rhythm perfect like never with a girl, not without showing her a few times. I say something too, but not a word I remember, or one that counts. I touch him too, it’s quick and it’s over like some other, any other, secret that slips into your life and then back out and you walk the world, c’mon, with nobody knowing.

  • •

  I show Kristen the painting that was projected on the wall in class. —OK. Tell me this isn’t—

  —Cole, you are such a perv. This is art. This is an old painting.

  —He paints this party, all these naked guys chasing naked girls clutching their clothes and laughing, and I’m the perv?

  —This was, like, ancient times.

  —So?

  —So,

  but she stops. Her face is flushed a little. Her boyfriend, now finally, is walking up, that guy who has an actual beard and won third place in the whatever for I think chemistry. She doesn’t care now, not as much, about arguing with me, and suddenly the sex conversations are private. He makes her come, probably I’m sure, too early to give up her virginity but they get naked and afterwards I bet she giggles and clutches her clothes. Ancient times. Ancient times to her is when she was single and thought I was a sex monster.

  —I guess you’re leaving now.

  —Yeah, see ya, Cole.

  I’m alone on the bench with this painting in this book. The lawn so green. And if we had a party like that they would send us all to jail.

  • •

  We’re sitting closer, hands in each other’s boxers again. Don’t know why we keep them on, or what that’s about. Don’t know what any of it’s about. I won’t kiss him but I think he’s tried a couple of times. Leaned in so I could see a couple places he missed shaving. His face so very close up. Yes, I really don’t know what it is that is happening.