The Gitano

[This is the second chapter of a story I began to write. But whoops! The first chapter, "The Poling," was rejected by Literotica because it focused too exclusively on a young man's being tormented with no redeeming erotic pleasure. I had figured to begin that with chapter 2. Perhaps if this comes first, then chapter 1, as part of the story, will be acceptable. But this chapter by itself explains all...]

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To this day, I don't know if Laia ever answered that simple question. But she always replied when I asked it, so I believe she must have thought she had answered.

That late October afternoon, when I lay like a wounded deer in a glade--and that question alone rose above the chaos of pain and disbelief—she gazed down at me without speaking. She was silent so long that abruptly I tried to roll over on my bed of fallen leaves. I needed yo hide my face from her because she was the girl I loved who had set me up to suffer as I never imagined I could. If she could not, or would not, answer—assuming there ever could be an answer—then either she was my worst enemy or I was a truly gutless...

I don't know. Wasn't I anyway? What answer could there be? A girl comes gliding into my life to become the definition of my desire, and leads me into a trap where I am stripped, grotesquely displayed, and eight grinning guys give my balls ten of the very best abrupt collisions with a metal pole. Tomorrow, or in a week, as pain permits me to think—and I am not lying in the woods waiting until I can move without agony—what will I know but that she is the worse enemy I ever had?

Seconds passed, she gazed at me, and I sought to fling myself over, hide my face and tears. My slightest move, now, drove from me a yelp of pain. I could not roll over without igniting a fire that radiated from my groin.

"No!" said Laia, reaching out to stop me. "No! Lie still, my darling.

"I will answer you. But there are hard things to say. Do you want me to cover myself, now?"

Young breasts, rounded so their weight made them fuller, firmer--breasts parted, sedate, with nipples darkly brown. I shook my head, and she smiled at me, slightly, and took a long breath that lift her breasts as though she raised aloft an offering to heaven.

"Tell me why you had to hurt me," I asked, saying it like a prayer.

She nodded slowly. "You said, before, that I look like a gypsy. I am a gypsy—gitano. I am the dark woman of heat, dance that ripples the belly, throws back the head so that the hair whips aside and the breasts thrust out—the woman that men view as an animal—and that they crave to take." Her hands came up slowly to cup her breasts, squeezing them together so the dark nipples folded and pushed outward.

"The night in our eyes, our hair, and even our nipples: men long for that night, but, by day..."

She frowned. "Your pain is terrible?"

I couldn't help it, as she spoke I was squirming on my bed of yellow leaves. My body would not stop seeking some escape from the fire that tormented my testicles; my hips kept shifting, my knees half rising, my belly tensing and un-tensing. Trying to escape. But the agony was attached to me, hanging there between my thighs.

I only nodded. I tried for a moment to stop writhing. Slowly she bent over me, her breasts swaying outward with their weight. Impossibly, her face came down and with infinite gentleness, she press her cheek there, at my belly's fork, a touch almost weightless, and she moved back and forth, her soft skin brushing me.

I must have released a kind of sob. It was as though at disbelief that this could be happening; but, also, it was in protest that this inconceivable sweetness still was agony. I even felt myself begin to stiffen a little. Yes, in some primal clash of pain and pleasure, the pleasure raised its head.

She saw and the tips of her longer fingers moved like a breeze over my flesh, as though molding the length of it. It responded and, at the same instant, a thrust of pain like a knitting needle shoved up into me made me gasp.

She straightened as though shocked, and said, "Oh!" And for the first time that day, or ever, tears started in those unfathomable deep eyes. One only started down her cheek. Her hand came up, swiftly, as though irritated, and wiped it away.

She said, as though reciting a lesson, "And Spain, it has been the best place for the Romani, the best in Europe. There, the gitano at times has been embraced—our language, our music, our dance. And that has made us grateful, but very afraid. Afraid that after centuries of traveling, always moving so that what we are never is consumed by any place, so that we may be embraced, but not be absorbed.

"For my family that was everything. We were the most traditional Roma, giving up nothing, returning no embrace. We were ready to be enslaved—and sometimes we were. And to be declared non-citizens and exterminated—and at times that happened, too. Always, though history talks of the Rom—in our language, "man"--it was the gypsy girl who everywhere was seized and raped. Raped, used, desired and discarded, because we always seemed to some men more than humanly desirable—some exotic fruit—but never treated as other women were."

She hesitated, meeting my eyes. She said, "Later, then."

I shook my head, very slowly. I said, "No, finish. Tell me why I had to be hurt this way."

She studied me and said, finally, "I do not think you can understand."

"Just tell me."

"In my family, and my tribe, which for so long was like a spirit presence around Barcelona..." She hesitated. "No woman, not my mother or sisters or aunts ever was touched, or insulted, without one of our men dying. To touch a woman of my people, if you were payo--not gitano--meant that you were killed by a man of our tribe. Killed man to man, in a fight with knives... Or instead perhaps the man of my family was killed in the fight. Or was hanged for killing the payo."

She spoke very softly. "Do you see? Not that you understand, or agree, but do you see? No payo could take our women without paying the highest price. If he won, if he survived, then, yes, the woman went to him."

I even managed a smile, forced past the pain. I said, "No father or brother, here, right? No one to kill me in a knife fight to win you? And so, I paid another price."

She lifted her head and unconsciously her arms came up to hug her bare breasts. As though reciting a ritual, she said: "You never will forget what you paid. If you want me, I will be yours. You shall tell me when to lie with your brother, your guest. You will tell me when another woman is to take my place. And you will tell me when to die."

I was shaking my head, but she went on: "Yes. You never will forget the price you paid, today. My friends who did this understand, at least a little. I never have given anything of myself to any of them. Never! But I made each understand what I am--even to be a friend. And what you paid for me means, now, that you own me."

Suddenly, her hands were squeezing together her lush breasts so her nipples were forced forward, and she exclaimed, "These? To Spanish men, once, this was the darkness of an animal. They could take a gitano girl as though she were a beast, devour her. What did it matter if two, three, or ten of them all had her? Used her and grunted with satisfaction, and tossed her aside..."

What could I do? I nodded. Looking up at her, I thought: I will have her! Every ounce of this gitano girl, and her will and obedience. I have paid.

She said, "To you, it is something to laugh at." She quickly raised her hand. "I know that it is. Because even trying to explain it to myself, I cannot say it the right way. But, what happened to you, today, is for men and women--girls--who, since before Columbus, have demanded a price for our women--so that I, Laia, am I woman to be prized."

I had wits enough to know that I didn't speak this language. I might recognize her words, but not what they meant to her. So what did I think? Something like: 'Now, the most beautiful and exciting girl in my whole class is totally mine! All of her that I know and all I have not yet seen--everything!'

Listen, I'm telling you how it was that day, at that time even it sounds dumb, now.

Still forcing out my words, I said: "I love you. If my stuff"--I gestured limply at my battered package--"ever works again, we will make love, won't we?"

With a motion like a feline, she stretched herself beside me, her cheek incredibly on my belly. I didn't breathe. Her slender fingers took my penis, softly, softly, as though a thing long familiar, and she murmured, "Tell me if this makes it hurt you."

Suddenly, she exclaimed, her voice soft and urgent: "I don't know what I can do!." I heard her anguish, and she said, "Perhaps my aunt can tell me what is permitted, but I am afraid to ask her."

Her fingers seemed to skim almost weightlessly back and forth along the swelling, lengthening part of me. I could even feel her warm breath on it.

"We cannot think of making love until we are married. If I am 'e yeli,' then you can accept me in marriage and I will open myself so you can break me."

"It wouldn't matter, to me, Laia..."

"No! 'El yeli' means I never have had a man in me. If I had had a man, you would not want me! On our wedding night, the women will take me into a room apart and spread me, open me, and their fingers will know if I am virgin.

"If I am, they will take me to you, and cry aloud, 'l yeli!' The gitano men, will take up that cry, tear their shirts, and raise me, and you, to their shoulders. 'El yeli' is the moment when you may take possession of me. In my life, I will know only your thrust and your seed, no other."

I laugh, now, when I think how I responded to this passionate declaration of chastity. "Can you take me in your mouth?" I asked.

"I don't know!" cried Laia. "How can I know? Until I came here, to this country, I did not know that women did such a thing!"

"It won't matter for 'el yeli,' you know?" I can't believe that I said that. I must have been crazed. Till then, I never had asked a girl even to kiss me.

And my Laia, as though reading from scripture she alone could see in some remote and sacred place, gravely said: "If I laugh, as you are laughing, now, then the gift of a gitano girl, her body's yielded, means nothing. And the men of my line, and my tribe, and woman who kept their chastity, grieved and died for nothing, for a joke."

I shook my head. "No, that can't be," and, for the first time, saw Laia not as a hot girl, an exotic to thrill my taste buds, but as a primal woman for whom a tradition of pride, an ancient code of honor, had set a price.

She spoke, at first, very slowly. "Today, in Barcelona, it is very bad, for us. There are the gypsy women on the street corners, all begging. They sit on the sidewalk, cover their heads with a scarf. Mostly, they are barefoot to make the tourists sorry for them. They hold out a hand for coins and wave a dirty, torn photo of little children. But these are not young women with young children. Mostly, they are old.

"Women of my family never have done this. To do this just to live we cannot understand. My mother was one of the most beautiful women in Spain. I know that it is true. To watch her dance was to sit near a fire almost too fierce to bear.

"But what did men in Barcelona care? She was gitano. A beggar, a thief, a whore—what did it matter? One night, the sailors dragged her aboard a ship in the harbor. For three days, my father and brother and the tribe could not find her. What was done to her in those three days!

"Gypsies can find out things. The city cannot keep a secret from them, not for long. My father learned where she was. He and my four brothers at night went aboard the ship—not to rescue. It was too late for my mother. Only to avenge.

"The fight was terrible. Sailors and officers died on every deck, in every passageway, as my father and brothers sought my mother. Many, many sailors died, but, by the time he found my mother, my father was alone. He was terribly wounded. There was no escape.

"He came to where my mother lay, naked and chained, soiled with the filth of many men. By then, many sailors with guns were coming. I do not know what they said to each other, my mother and father. But I know that she would weep with joy as she spread her arms to receive death. Perhaps my father would not speak. Perhaps he would say, 'I love you, Maia.'

"He he killed her, of course, before the sailors arrived, killed as she prayed he would come to do. And then, he went from the room and four more sailors died before he went down with wounds the newspapers said were too many too count.

"And that is why the tribe sent me from Barcelona. Soon, those seeking revenge would have come for my father's family—for me. Quickly, by night, I was taken aboard a fishing boat, from there to Marseilles, and then to America."

A very long time passed, it seemed, before I could say. "Just lie beside me, Laia. Be a promise, and I will wait for you."

She pressed still closer to my side, so that both breasts, I knew, were the soft insisting points against my skin. Her questing finger tips sought me where I hurt and rested there, as light as a kiss, until her own breath on my chest was quick and hot with her passion.