Art 5

September 2001

I met Amy by accident. I wasn't looking to hook up with anyone. For the past six months my sex life had consisted of nothing but fantasy, orgasm denial and getting a handjob from my ex, usually on Wednesday evenings, into a receptacle-end Trojan.

I ran into Amy at an outdoor farmer's market in a park in downtown Brooklyn. We were looking at produce in the same stall (actually I was looking at Amy) when she began to flirt with me, big time. I was flattered but it also made me nervous. What would Caitlyn think, or say? Caitlyn was my ex. At first I didn't even respond, not verbally anyway. But then I got back on the bicycle, so to speak, started playing along and it all came back to me.

I'd just bought a bottle of homemade Macintosh apple cider and offered to buy Amy one. For the next twenty minutes or so we strolled from stall to stall sipping our cider and chatting while I pretended to be interested in all the produce and other items Amy raved about. Bundles of kale? Why not! Overly phallic Chinese cucumbers grown upstate? Jesus! Sure!

Then, abruptly, Amy stopped in her tracks, bags of groceries hanging heavy from both hands, and said, "Oh shit! What time is it?" I told her. "Shit! I'm supposed to meet somebody at my apartment in, like, five minutes!"

I gave it a parting shot. "Can I call you sometime?"

"Call me!"

"I don't know your number!"

Amy paused long enough to turn back and shout her phone number out, as if to the entire farmer's market. From memory I scribbled the number down, hoping I'd remembered it right. I had a hard on. I hadn't experienced this kind of thrill in eight years, when Caitlyn and I first started dating. I was a youthful 36-still in my prime. Or so I believed. It was long overdue.

That was a Thursday. I called Amy on Saturday mid-afternoon. I got her voicemail. I didn't leave a message. I was afraid my own voice would betray my nervousness. It was like I was back in highschool, calling a pretty girl who barely knew I was alive for a date. I called again Sunday but again Amy didn't answer. Was she avoiding me? Wait! She wouldn't recognize my number on her caller ID. Or maybe she was like me and didn't pick up her landline unless she knew who was calling. I felt mildly proud of myself. I hadn't persisted—called her again and again and again—but at least I'd given it a shot.

On Monday when I got home from work, and after I'd downed a few cans of nerve medicine, I tried once more. Someone answered. If it was Caitlyn she sounded different, duller over the phone. Had I remembered the number right?

"Caitlyn?"

"Yes?" she asked warily. I was relieved. I told her my name.

"It's me. The guy you met the other day at the farmer's market."

"Oh, hi! I wondered why you hadn't called me." A broadening smile replaced the taut anxiety in my facial muscles. This was a good sign...

"Well, I tried but..."

"It's OK. I was really busy this weekend anyway. What's up?"

I stumbled. "Well I...I really enjoyed talking to you the other day and..."

"Yeah, me too. How old are you?"

I swallowed. "I'm...36."

"Oh, that's OK I'm nearly 30."

Coincidence, I thought. Caitlyn was 29, about to turn 30. I'd reached a point, an age, where young women in bars look at you...and look right past you. No, THROUGH you, as if you don't even exist for them. Oh well. Caitlyn liked older men. Maybe Amy would too. In fact Caitlyn had dumped me for a man old enough to be her father. An ostentatious art critic (is there any other kind?) who spoke with a faux London accent. The prick.

"Anyway...," I stumbled on, "I was wondering if you'd, you know, like to get together sometime. Again," I added, superfluously.

"Yeah, I would. Definitely. This week's a bitch for me, however. I'm full up. How 'bout next Saturday?"

I swallowed. Again. This was too good to be true. A Saturday night date with Amy! "Saturday would be great!" I shouted into the phone. I was overplaying my hand. Calm down! I told myself...

"Why don't you come over to my place around five. No, six. We'll have a few cocktails and watch a movie or something."

"That would be...!" I toned it down, heart racing: "Sure."

"I'll give you my address. Ready to write?"

I liked Amy. I didn't know anything about her but I liked her already. A lot. I guessed she was from the Midwest, short-cropped blonde hair. Thick behind her ears. Germanic. Pretty but not beautiful. She didn't mess around. Got straight to the point. I stood there at this moment, writing down the nearby address, erection constrained inside a pair of Caitlyn's panties, fantasizing about Caitlyn, Amy I mean, with her blunt voice, spanking the underside of my erect penis with the leather tongue of Caitlyn's riding crop, the one she kept in my bedroom closet. For old times' sake.

I was about to cum. In Caitlyn's austere cotton panties (I preferred silk). I was cumming as I sighed "Bye" into the phone, to Amy. It had only been five days. Or I should say, it was late in the week, orgasm-wise, Caitlyn-wise. I was screwed.

Amy left me a VM the following afternoon, while I was at work. The first semi-sentence sank my heart: "Change of plans. I'll be making veggielasagna. Bring a pinot noir? Cool?"

My heart lifted. Dinner with lovely Amy, who was even prettier in her own plain blonde-tossed way than dark-haired Caitlyn. Pedantically, perhaps, I thought to myself, standing in women's panties in my Brooklyn apartment, that a Chianti Classico might be more appropriate. But if the girl wanted a Pinot for her lasagna she would fucking get one!

I sat at the little "dining room" table in the cramped apartment watching Amy move. I'd had a few beers at Z's before coming over. And now a couple of glasses of cheap Bourgogne. Macon, I should say. It was earthy, a little tart. I could have watched a seemingly confused Amy dart around her little kitchen all day.

"Oh shit! Did I...?"

"What?"

"I put the lasagna in, right?" She opened the oven door, again.

"You did," I confirmed.

"Fuck. I forgot to turn on the stove. Fuck!" She twisted a burner knob.

"No, the oven, darling." Christ! I'd been with this woman for all of three quarters of an hour, combined, and I'd already called her darling. I was in love!

She emerged from the kitchen, empty wine glass in hand, and blew stray wisps of blonde from her forehead, before brushing them back with a free hand. She sat. I poured more wine. Her little table looked second-hand. Maybe third, the chairs narrow and metal-framed with tacky vinyl cushions. Some sort of pattern on them I failed to discern.

"I'm not much of a cook," Amy declared.

"That's OK. Neither am I. I could've picked up a pizza at Cino's."

"No, this'll be good. It'll be ready in...," glancing over a shoulder, "like, two hours? Zat OK? I have more wine."

"I could run out and get some."

"No, I have some Hungarian wine or some shit in my rack I haven't opened yet. A friend brought it over."

Wispy, near-bangs had fallen again toward her blue-grey eyes. She blew. She pushed them away again. Amy hadn't exactly dressed sexy for our "date." Jeans and a faded college sweatshirt: Pratt. Though last time I checked Pratt Institute (which is an art school not some kind of institution for the criminally insane) had no basketball team, let alone football. Her feet were bare, toenails painted black. In fact one pretty foot (goth lacquer color aside) now rested on table's edge. She was leaning back. I wanted to kiss it, the underside of her dirty foot.

"Fuck! This has been a revolving door today, men-wise. Whew!"

I perked up. "What do you mean?"

"Well first I run into an old boyfriend of mine at Z's Friday night...You ever go there?"

I may've blushed. Blanched, I mean. I lied: "No, uh..."

"Pool tables. Anyway he ends up spending the night. We sleep in late." Amy sighed. "Now I have to fix his ass breakfast before he goes off to work. He sells appliances..."

"Appliances?"

"You know, stereo equipment and shit. Crazy Larry's. You know the place?"

"Over by the World Trade Center."

"Yeah. He's good in bed but kinda...a pain in the ass, y'know? A jerk?"

I nodded. I was getting an erection. This was too good to be true! I not only had a new girlfriend, tentatively speaking...but she liked to talk openly about the other men in her life. Men she fucked! It was years into my relationship with Caitlyn before we reached this crucial stage. I poured the last of the wine into Caitlyn's glass. Amy's, I mean. This was great!

"Then—he left about two hours before you showed up—Brandon was here..."

"Who's Brandon?" I inquired, trying to sound blasé about the whole dubious business.

"Brandon's the president of the literary club I, um, belong to. I've started writing. Poetry. I'll show you some of my stuff later if you're interested..."

"Sure," I said. Not meaning it. My interest was in Amy. My interest was in Amy's relationship with this guy Brandon...

"Anyway," my date said, "I've been trying to bed him for months. Finally he gives in and we fuck a few weeks ago. He's been coming over every Saturday since. We get high, we fuck then we grade papers..." Amy shook her head: "Some of these people...you should read this crap. They're imbeciles!"

"I can imagine," I said. I had a raging hard on. Did it show? Beneath the rickety table? Amy, whom I barely knew, had just confessed to fucking her ex-boyfriend last night and then again this morning. And then a few hours later to fucking the married president of her club? This was...this was too good to be true! This was my latently promiscuous ex to the second power! Did she sense I was a hopeless cuckold?

"He's married," she added, with a shrug. "I've met his wife. She's nice..."

Amy looked at me across the narrow table. The grey-blue eyes drilling me said: What's your story? She barely had to ask.

"Well, um..."

"I'll get that fucking Hungarian wine..."

Amy rose, metal chair scraping back. I rose. "I'll get it."

"No, it's right here," returning with a warm bottle of red and a butterfly corkscrew. I removed the stubborn cork, poured. I replied:

"I was hooked up with someone you know for, like, eight years?"

"I know?"

"Caitlyn? She was over on Wednesday, she comes over sometimes...," I under-exaggerated. "I think you went to Pratt together? Any rate I mentioned that I'd met you and she...I think she remembered you."

Amy, frowning, drew a hand down from her left ear. "Pretty girl, dark hair down her back?"

I nodded. Amy, gradually, smiled.

"Oh yeah. I remember...What's her name again?"

"Caitlyn."

"We called her Kate. Whatever." Amy laughed. "I had sex with her a few times."

I sat up even straighter. "What?"

"Yeah. She was very naïve. We got into it though. She was pretty good in bed, after awhile."

"Caitlyn?" I was stunned. I could hardly compose my drunken words. "She was a virgin when I...when I got together with her."

Amy still wore a smile. "Maybe with men maybe. But not with girls."

I realized my mouth was hanging open. I closed it. Opened it: took another drink. "I...I confess I didn't know that."

Amy leaned forward, elbows on the table. I was a chess piece on the board at this point. A lesser one. A rook? I was in danger of being checkmated. Checked at least. "So what's your relationship with Caitlyn like these days? She was sexy, hot in an understated kind of way. I enjoyed licking her. Do you still lick her?"

I swallowed. Once in highschool I asked a girl named Mary Beth out. She was a cheerleader, and one of the prettiest girls in school. I still remember the look of her shapely, athletic legs in her short, pleated, purple cheerleader's skirt. Things were so relatively innocent then. And I was unworthy of her. Things had gotten away from me. And now the towers were about to fall fall and shit had gotten out of control. Our innocence lost. Our self-indulgence and stupidity. Our self-absorption:

Unforgiven.

September 10, 2001

It had been almost a week and a half. Fuck! And now, in my apartment on a Monday of all days, Caitlyn's slender right hand was cupping my balls, raising them best it could in my—her—panties.

"Pull 'em down," she said, of her pink cotton panties.

"Yes, dear."

Now she fondled them directly, my shaved balls, as if her hand were a scale. She had an uncanny ability to judge. "Good. Last week you disappointed me."

"I know. I'm sorry, dear. Lost control."

"I would whip your balls and cock but I know you'd like that."

"Whip me!"

"No. You've had nearly a week and a half of denial and now your balls are full. You've redeemed yourself."

"I'm dying here."

"We'll put a condom on you and relieve you."

"Please, dear!"

"But tell me about your new friend Amy."

Caitlyn was expertly rolling the condom down my erect cock. I'd dropped my—her—panties to my ankles. She was pressed against me from behind now. I could feel, in my middle back, as usual, the points of her little B-cup bra. She'd made noises about getting a boob job. The art critic knew a doctor...

Caitlyn was stroking me now. It was a premature Monday not a typical Wednesday.

I needed to cum. Cum!

"What did Amy say about me? Did you sleep with her?"

"No! No, I wouldn't do that!"

"Why not?"

I was cumming in the condom, cumming, breath competing with my words: "I told her...She told me..."

"What?"

"Oh, PLEASE!"

"Do I need to whip the answer out of you? Amy?"

"Please, darling! Yes! PLEASE!"

Afterwards, under calmer circumstances, after Caitlyn had horse-whipped my limp, spermy cock and balls, and my reddened ass, chasing me around the apartment, and as we downed the last of the Bass ales she'd brought, while seated once again on my ratty couch, she wanted to know more. About Amy. I was nude, Caitlyn dressed.

"Is this serious?"

"I just met her, darling."

"Does she know about you and me? Our...relationship?"

"I told her I planned to remain celibate."

"How did that go over?"

"Fine. She said she had enough men in her life for sex. Just having a male friend for a simple, you know, non-sexual relationship would be...a relief."

"Simple? You believed that shit?"

"I don't know her yet, Caitlyn."

"You believe it or not?"

"I don't know what to believe."

"Do you masturbate to her?"

"My fantasies? Yes. Now. But you as well, dear, as always. You mostly."

"But you stop short?"

"I do. I did. Except for that first time when I just..."

"You're lucky I didn't make you go another week."

"I know. Thank you for that. I so appreciate that you allow me to cum once a week. You know that. I owe you so much!"

Caitlyn switched gears. "What does this slut do for a living?"

"She, um. I think she's some kind of server..."

"Server?"

"She says she works days at Windows on the World, top floor of the World Trade Center."

"Oh, so she's making great use of her art degree."

Caitlyn was a school teacher, an art teacher. Public schools. It was a rare Monday evening, not a Wednesday, Caitlyn in my apartment. Being sarcastic. Everything was ahead of schedule. Perhaps she couldn't stand the wait? The torture? "So she's at work now?"

"No. In the morning. She complains about how early she has to get up. It's a bitch. I feel a little sorry for her..."

"Oh."