The Mouth

We called him The Mouth.

He was unattractive, tall and lanky and weak, with pale, noodly arms and knobby knees and ice-pick elbows. His face was splotchy with acne scars and patchy in places the razor missed, and his eyes were a flat, periwinkle blue, made more dull and lifeless by the thick-lensed glasses he wore. I remember when he'd tried contacts for a week; they actually made him look worse, lending him a heartless look reserved for lonely, jaded men sending bombs through the mail. His nostrils flared and his ears stuck out, a fact his short, hedgehog haircut refused to hide.

But his mouth...

It was an out-of-place feature gracing his face. So unusual and startling sensuous, it was disturbing, like playing a game of One of These Things Is Not Like the Other. Yet we never might've noticed if we never learned what it could do.

His talents were discovered during a round of Seven Minutes in Heaven during our junior year of college at a frat party. We were drunk and giggly from Bartles and Jaymes and had our hearts set on making out with the guys we liked, the ones who excelled in Flip Cup, had doctor fathers and socialite moms, and told fag jokes with their every breath.

I have no idea why The Mouth was there. Maybe he had just wanted to see how the cooler half lived. The boys we loved humored him. They found his being there amusing if not easy to ignore. They palled around with him, high on the novelty of his presence, and plied him with cans of Natty Ice. It was hard to tell if The Mouth was drunk at first; he pounded every beer they passed him and kept pace with our boys, but he didn't shout like they did, didn't shove anyone, didn't initiate stupid stunts. He wasn't like Billy Petrucelli, who, at the last party, got most of the other guys to defecate in an empty plastic pretzel tub and left it in a roommate's bed. But The Mouth did sway a bit when Catelyn, who was dying to kiss Billy-of-the-shit-jar because he had beautiful eyes and drove a BMW, suggested Seven Minutes in Heaven "for old times' sake."

The boys tugged The Mouth to his feet and teased him, saying how this was his big night; they were gonna get him laid at last and he could kiss his virginity goodbye. We girls shot each other looks that said I'm not doing it. Then who is? The guys plopped him on the floor in our circle and Catelyn spun an empty wine cooler bottle. It landed near Billy, but he must not have wanted to kiss her as much as she wanted to kiss him, or else he just wanted her to kiss The Mouth more. Billy argued that the bottle was totally not pointing at him and drew a dubiously straight beeline from the bottle to The Mouth, who sat next to him, expressionless and ugly as ever. Catelyn didn't mask her total revulsion at the concept as the boys continued to shout, each one taking a turn at describing the spin, inching it further toward The Mouth with every liberal reenactment. We girls tried to insist otherwise, but there was no talking sense to this wolf pack.

Finally, Catelyn stood, her fingers fists. "Just come on already," she muttered, huffing and puffing her way to the nearby half-bathroom—our Heaven. That was the thing about Catelyn. She could be cruel but her word and her spin were always good.

Our whooping, giddy boys clapped The Mouth on the back, propelled him to a standing position, and aimed him toward the bathroom. Catelyn, her face a storm cloud, scowled and tugged him in after her. The door slammed. We hooted and we speculated what sort of deals she was striking up with The Mouth in there. Maybe she was going to buy her way out of it with fifty bucks. After all, she wasn't actually going to go through with it—he was The Mouth, although that wasn't his name then, not yet. I actually don't even remember what we used to call him. Maybe nothing.

We kept our eye on the time and laughed about how we weren't going to tell her when the seven minutes were up. Now that she was in there with him, we had no plans to save her; it would be funnier that way. But soon we forgot to clock-watch, distracted once again by the boys' pranks. This time Chris Watts rallied everyone to scale the fence wrapped around the nearby apartment complex's pool for a moonlit skinny dip. The majority of the party took off after him, taking the shortcut through the woods and shedding clothes as they stumbled along. I lingered behind with a few other girls on the front porch, smoking and laughing and predicting the outcome of the swim. They were so gonna get busted.

Then Catelyn came out of the house and we fell silent, watching her as the realization that she still existed fought through our drunken haze. Then we relaxed and asked where she'd been and teased her, wondering how it was.

She stepped closer, and in the sick yellow light hanging over the front door, I saw the look of pure distress on her ashen face as she demanded a cigarette.

We stopped laughing and got riled up and indignant. What the hell happened? What did he do? Where was the scumbag now?

"He left." Catelyn lit the cigarette one of us bummed her with a borrowed lighter and tucked a strand of her long blond hair behind her ear, sighing like she released all the air from her lungs. "He went home, I guess."

More questions resulted. Well, what the fuck went on in there? Did he actually try to do something to her? Did he get crazy? Did he hurt her? We blamed ourselves. We should've stuck around. We never should've made her go in there with him. We should've sent him on his loser way the second he stepped foot through the door and tried to infiltrate our world.

"No, no." Catelyn waved her hand, the cigarette sandwiched between her middle and index fingers as she rubbed her creased, worried forehead with the back of her other palm. "I'm okay. It's fine, really."

We stared at her with expressions of doubt.

"Actually." Catelyn squeezed her eyes shut. "It wasn't fine." She gave a pathetic whimper. "It was fucking incredible." Then she sat on one of the porch steps, like she wasn't capable of standing any longer, and tears dripped down her cheeks.

We continued watching her, waiting for the punch line. Instead, what lapsed was her detailed account of what happened, punctuated with her sniffles and watery gasps.

"I insisted on keeping the light off. He's so ugly, you guys, I had no idea how else I was going to get through it," Catelyn said. "He just shrugged and I hit the switch right before I kissed him. Naturally, I expected him to be all gross about it—too much tongue, too much slobber, too much teeth, all grabbing my boobs and stuff. But he wasn't like that at all. This is what he did."

She stood and turned to Lindsay, the friend nearest her, and slowly looped one arm around her neck while pulling her closer by her jeans' waistband. Then she angled her head, and for a moment, we thought Catelyn might actually kiss her. Lindsay's eyes even fluttered shut in reflex, in anticipation. But we said nothing, too stunned and too intrigued to intervene.

Catelyn drew away just before the kiss could commence, and Lindsay blinked and stumbled backward, flushed and nervous. Catelyn didn't seem to notice as she continued, "And then he kissed me. Softly at first. Gentle. He, like, kissed each lip by itself, and then he did this thing where he bit my bottom lip and tugged it, then he would stop and kiss it better." She took a deep breath. "It was honestly the best kiss I've ever had. Which is probably why I let him do what he did next."

As we listened in riveted silence, she said, "He started to unbutton my jeans, and I tried to tell him to knock it off, but his tongue was in my mouth and, well, it was making me sort of not want to stop. Then my jeans were on the floor, and somehow I was sitting on the bathroom counter, and before I knew it, his head was..." She swallowed hard. "Just... Oh my God, you guys. I didn't know what else to do but just let him...you know. It's like I suddenly didn't know how to do anything else."

She smooshed out her barely smoked cigarette. "Then I came, and it was like I'd never stop. It was the first time someone other than myself ever got me off." Her voice darkened. "None of those other idiots ever came close. They never even fucking bother to come close."

She meant our boys—Christian and Billy and the like. We darted each other uneasy glances. None of us had ever talked this way about sex, or the guys for that matter. Sure, we would all get together and dish, griping about all our gorgeous, clueless boys. Oh, them. They're so charming when they try. We love the effort they put in, no matter how wasted they are when it happens. Sex had never been horrible—okay, sometimes it was. But that was a part of life, that's how it was—until right then. Until The Mouth.

The boys returned, murdering our intense conversation and leaving me feeling like I'd been startled from a deep sleep. Billy led the pack, his wet black hair plastered to his forehead and droplets of water trickling down his bare chest and toned stomach. He looked so hot, fresh from an Abercrombie ad. Catelyn didn't seem to notice him at all. Instead she looked at us with eyes that seemed to beg Please forgive me for enjoying myself so much.

But one of us girls—could it even have been me? I can't remember—let out a cruel, nervous snort that set off a domino effect and affirmed that we couldn't do that. It was uncomfortable to even look at her, knowing what we knew. She didn't belong to us anymore. Catelyn bit her lip and lowered her gaze to the ground, and seemed to keep it there until graduation day.

In the weeks following, we continued to titter with derision but also with envy. Catelyn's orgasm was something of a joke to us, one we hated. She experienced something we never had and left us behind, brimming with her secret womanly knowledge while we were stuck with the same fumbling jackasses we always were. We didn't want it to, but Catelyn's story changed how we felt toward our boys. She was right: As far as skill and stamina went, they were pathetic. They didn't even try to be good; they believed we had no other options, that we didn't even want other options. Lions fuck lions, after all. The guys all thought that, and until Catelyn disappeared into the bathroom with The Mouth, we'd thought that too. We still laughed at the boys' jokes and flirted with them, but privately we despised them, and Catelyn especially for showing us what we'd been missing. Now we couldn't be satisfied or, rather, pretend to be. It wasn't fair.

Then Kendra stepped up. She was the courageous, curious one, and deeply inspired and intrigued by Catelyn's reported experience. No one could hold her back when she had an idea, and this time her idea involved The Mouth.

What happened, apparently, was this: Kendra sauntered up to The Mouth in the student union, where he sat at one of the long orange tables with the other gamers and geeks, and slammed her math book on the table. "Do you know anything about this stuff?" she'd asked him, cracking her gum.

He'd nodded.

"Good. Meet me in my dorm at seven and tell me all about it." Then she flounced away in her short skirt, giving him no choice. She never gave anyone a choice, and when he'd showed up at her room that night, it'd been more of the same. She booted out her roommate, sat on the edge of her mattress, and gave her textbook the most cursory of flip-throughs before tossing it aside. Then she lay back and spread her legs and announced, "I've had enough trig for one night. What about you?"

"He just dove right in there," Kendra later reported with a giggle. "He had a tongue like a dog, lapping away like he couldn't get enough of me."

It was then we realized the problem with Catelyn was that her delivery sucked. Her experience had been intriguing, but also frightening, alienating, and too tragic. Kendra, on the other hand, was all about spin. She didn't ask anyone for forgiveness or acceptance and made it clear she was the one in control. Having The Mouth go down on her was gift to both her and him. She would get the orgasms while he would get the privilege a loser like him could only dream of.

Kendra never acted chagrined about what happened—that was key. If people were appalled by what she did with The Mouth, she would fix her cool gray eyes on them and poof, they'd disappear. No one wanted that, so we were at the mercy of Kendra, who called all the shots. However, she couldn't bear to do anything alone. She insisted we all had to be in on this, we all had to try it, what were we skinny bitches waiting for? Her decisions were fortified by others following suit, and so all the girls did, one by one. Kendra orchestrated everything, but how, I don't know. And the girls would come back raving, sounding so much like Kendra I began to get everyone's encounters with The Mouth confused. Was it Lindsay who got licked in the laundry room? Did Nikki say she peeled off her bathing suit bottoms and let The Mouth eat her out "for hours"? Was Becca the one who sat astride his face, warming his ears with her thighs? Everyone blended into one knowing, worldly, arrogant woman.

Except for me. I was the last one. To be honest, I was afraid. I'd had sex before, for sure, even with Billy, but that had never been a big deal. But all this with The Mouth sounded like quite the opposite. I kept thinking of Catelyn, still meeting us for dinner but never really saying much of anything, and how she went to all the parties but attended as a ghost. I didn't want that to happen to me. I didn't want to be on the fringe, trapped in my own head with thoughts too big for anyone to want to identify with. I didn't want to feel that much.

But Kendra gave me no choice. One Wednesday, she approached me on the quad, her coppery hair tumbling around her shoulders and her lips twisted in a smirk. "You still living with your parents?"

"Yes."

"And they don't get home until six, right?"

"Right..."

"Good." She looked very pleased with herself. "The Mouth will be at your place until five forty-five then." She wagged her finger at me. "Don't give me that look. It's high time you did something about that pesky O-ginity. You'll thank me later."

I later came home to a quiet house after a day spent feeling nauseous. My legs shook and my heart hammered as I stared uncomprehending at whatever was flashing on MTV and waited for the doorknob to bong, alerting me to The Mouth's arrival. But actually, he knocked, a sound that temporarily surprised the terror out of me as I ran to the front entrance to let him inside. I opened the door and we stood in silence for a moment, regarding each other, and I was reminded how hideous he was. He looked nothing like Billy, and yet I was supposed to let him touch me? I almost slammed the door in his face but I was struck still by my rage at having to be in this situation.

Finally, he cocked an untamed eyebrow. "Are we doing this or what?"

I nodded and, with numb arms, gestured for him to enter. He did so like he'd been at my place hundreds of time, moving with a bored confidence that dispelled some of my stress and annoyed me. Who did he think he was, strolling through my house like we were equals? He headed for the den, a tiny room with wood paneling and a large brown leather that dominated the small space. He threw his backpack on the rug and turned to me. "Well?"

My fears returned at his expectant tone, and I tried to shake them by remembering I was better than him. There wasn't anything to be afraid of. Kendra and the other girls were right; this was a privilege for him and a gift to me. With renewed confidence, I dropped into a sitting position on the couch like I was the Queen of Sheba and feigned ennui. "Well?" I echoed sarcastically.

Without a word, he nudged the coffee table out of the way with his shin, grabbed my legs behind the knees, and yanked me to the edge of the couch. I whimpered in surprise and bit my lip, feeling vulnerable in this un-ladylike position, half-hanging off the seat with my neck bent and my head resting against the cushion. His stoic expression didn't change as he lowered himself to his knees and ran his hands up my skirt and down the outside of my thighs. He was all business, and I finally recognized I was in the presence of an expert. My breathing hitched as he pushed my skirt all the way up, revealing the flirty pink panties I'd chosen to wear that morning, and he dragged me toward him again, bringing my quickly dampening cunt to his face. Then he parted my thighs and leaned forward, giving my clit a lick through the satiny fabric.

I swallowed hard and grit my teeth in an effort not to make a sound, but a needy noise still came from the back of my throat. Okay, this was all right, not so bad. This was even pretty good. In an effort to forget it was The Mouth between my legs, I closed my eyes and pictured Billy going down on me, but it was difficult to hold onto the thought. Billy had never done anything remotely as good at this. No one had.

The Mouth licked my clit until the crotch of my panties was so wet, I didn't know whether it was because of his tongue or my cunt. Then he pulled away and peeled my panties off my legs in a move so smooth, skilled, and practiced my tongue clung to the roof of my mouth, dry as dust. He spread my legs wider and for a moment did nothing but stare. I'd never been more exposed in my life, and I became wetter beneath his removed, studious gaze. My cunt twitched and clenched. I wanted him to just plunge his tongue inside me already. I wanted his lips nuzzling my clit. God, I couldn't believe this was happening. How had I gone from being unable to look in his direction to needing him to fuck me with his mouth?

Finally-finally-finally, he bowed his head again, but his teasing had come to an end. He licked me like his life depended on it, like he needed to taste every last drop. My hips bucked toward his face as he flicked my tingling clit with his tongue, and I forgot to be embarrassed of the mews falling from my lips. I forgot everything, really—Kendra, Catelyn, Billy, everyone was gone. I watched The Mouth eat my pussy and I sucked in a deep, trembling breath. This hideous boy had his head between my legs and was licking me toward an incomparable oblivion, and somehow that made him the sexiest person I'd ever seen.

So when he slammed two fingers inside my slick cunt, it took everything inside me not to scream for him fuck me, truly fuck me, however he wanted. The urge was pure craziness. I'd never begged for anything in my life, let alone for a boy like The Mouth. Then again, I'd never needed anyone like this before. He continued to pump his fingers into me, and tears stung my eyes. My self-control was in tatters. I couldn't think beyond the moment, beyond my desperation to come on his tongue. It was confusing and scary and unbelievably awesome, and I wanted nothing more than to just stay on this couch and have The Mouth lick me until my parents came home, and if they walked in, I'd hold his head to my creaming cunt and make him stay there until I came...

The chaotic thoughts disintegrated as my mind went white and a cloudburst of pleasure exploded inside me. I arched my back and nearly fell off the couch, but The Mouth held me in place and continued to suck on my clit to the point where it felt so good it was almost painful. But again my legs quaked and I tumbled into the abyss of ecstasy a second time, the walls of my cunt squeezing his fingers tight.

My screams became whimpers as he licked me clean then sat back and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. His cheeks were flushed but otherwise he appeared unfazed. Meanwhile, I felt fucking transformed. I stared at him, and for a moment, I hated him deeply. How was I supposed to go back to fucking Billy and his stupid friends now? How was I supposed to be satisfied with such boring, selfish mediocrity? I'd seen the alternative and was sold. In just one afternoon, The Mouth ruined me for other boys. The lions could go fuck themselves.