Starting life in NYC was a tumultuous time. One day, I had been living in Livingston Manor, an idyllic place in Upstate NY. Fly fishing has been the draw for people from the big city for decades. They love to come up here to stand for hours in streams covered by a thick canopy of forest. My mother was a grounds keeper at the Livingston Manor Fly Fishing Club, a members only club with a history. She'd stack the wood with care to provide the right kind of dry tinder at the bottom and leave air gaps so that the logs could breathe well. The members could throw a single match in to light up their evenings and leave beer bottles strewn around for her to collect. We lived tucked away in an old hunting cabin in the forest. Everyone I knew I had known since I can remember. My afternoons were exploring the forest and maybe making it over to Maddie.
Now, I was in NYC. My whole life I had prepared for starting my life ones I would get out of Livingston Manor. I had gotten into Hunter College with a major for biology. I figured that my background of growing up in nature and a destination somewhere in medicine might make for a good path. My dad had found me a place to live on the East River side of Alphabet City, a little room in the apartment of a retired hippie. Jackson was always home, listening to Grateful Dead and smoking weed. The place was crammed with plants and indiscernible stuff that had yellowed a decade ago. My room was bare, except for the camping pad, my clothes all over the floor, and a shiny new iMac, that the CUNY system had gifted me.
My first day in the city had been full of excitement. All the colorful people like a woman walking in a Victorian dress down the street or the black gay guy in a thong and cowboy hat on the subway, the famous sites everywhere like the Empire State Building seemingly peeking at me everywhere from its high perch, and the energy of people yelling at cabs, Grubhub bicyclists blaring music while going the wrong way, and beautiful boobs everywhere -- a girl knows what she likes.
But the first day of class had been disappointing. I tried to make friends. This tall red head with a skinny chest and wide hips introduced herself as Megan. Yet her eyes were so empty. They were like they were glazed over and not present. Right as, I sat myself on a desk top to relax into getting to know her, she walked on to rush home. It was so easy to say hi to classmates, but their mind was always focused on something else. I ended up walking home alone through the crowd. And this time, I saw the scarier parts of the crowd. I saw the homeless, scrawny body of a man with his pants at his knees and holes in his t-shirt the size of a water melon. He lay across the sidewalk crowded with people, yet everyone stepping around him. I saw the drug dudes on St Mark's Place hitting on every woman that passed. A giantly big woman with flip flops hit me with her bag on my head because I walked to slowly.
When I was back in my room, I felt like a haunted animal locked up. There were people everywhere but nobody cared about me. The city felt like a swirling mass that made me go out of my mind. I couldn't go back to my childhood home because that place had suffocated me throughout my junior years. Jackson was howling to Grateful Dead outside my door. Outside my window, a drug addicted mom was yelling at her sobbing five year old on a scooter, the hateful words echoing between the buildings on the narrow street.
I opened my book about plant biology. Ms. Anderson had given us not a few pages to read, but we had to read each chapter start to finish. There were three chapters to be read. Fuck my life, this wasn't Central School, where we took walks through the forest to learn real biology instead of sitting all day in class. I flipped to the first page. Learning the elements of a flower was soothing because it was familiar and gave me a sense of progress. That was until the light outside started darkening and my head turned into a pounding hammer. Too much studying, but there were still two more chapters to get through before class tomorrow.
Pushing on, I felt worse and worse. The tension in my head had become such a strong pain that I couldn't think. My stomach was churning from it, only eating pop tarts all afternoon wasn't helping either. The street noise of intermittent ambulance sirens wailing and heavy trucks banging through potholes had gotten to me. My whole being had turned into feeling pain and misery everywhere. I wanted to puke -- the kind of dry puke impulse that doesn't actually give you the relief of releasing.
There is a strange thing about me. The only thing that gives me release from this bodily pain is masturbating. I kind focus on something fun like TV at this time, but the pleasure of sex can take me there. And then an orgasm is a moment, a few seconds of half a minute where the pain recedes to bliss. After with a little luck, I'll pass out and the sleep can cure the headache. My instinct had gotten used to connecting headaches with masturbating. When I reached into my pants, I only felt dryness that was unhappy to touch. The shriveled up petals of my flower weren't ready to be caressed.
I tried to study more. Yet every word I tried to focus on made me cringe from the burst of head tension. I felt even more like an animal, so reduced from my ability to function. Out of desperation, I did a wild thing. I slipped out of my clothes. I slipped into a pair of overall jeans. Those are the jeans that have a front over the body and shoulder straps. I wore nothing underneath it. I checked in the mirror that the area with the buttons for the shoulder straps covered my nipples -- but barely. The side of the front left the tear drop shape of my side boobs visible to the passersby. My breasts were unrestrained and flowing with ripples and motions as I walked. The idea alone of being exposed started to get the blood flowing to my nether parts.
I slipped out of the house. I didn't like the streets of Alphabet City. There was a mix of ghetto brothers hanging out in the street, substance dependent people pushed their way past the police station, and there was a ton of dog shit on the ground like nobody cared and the city sanitation department didn't bother coming. I walked swiftly southwest towards SoHo, the pretty part of town. Elegant fashion stores are set in quaint historic light manufacturing buildings on cobble stone streets. Throngs of tourists mix with glammed up models. That's where I liked showing off my body. The farmer john jeans were baggy by themselves -- nothing sexy, but not wearing anything underneath it, let that baggy material move around me and give all kinds of peeks through the side onto my body. When I was bending over to adjust my Doc Martin shoe laces, I believe that my breasts hang completely free letting people look at my nipples.
Nobody said anything. The stream of people on the sidewalk simply opened in front of me and closed back together again. But I could see the eyes of the boyfriends, holding their girl friends' hands while their eyes were fastened on my chest. A hungry, greedy gaze would erupt on their eyes. One moment, their eyes looked dull, staring ahead into pedestrian traffic focusing on nothing in specific. The next moment, they focus with intensity on my chest and track it as we moved past each other. There'd be a smirk, a mix of devil and happy child, would light up. Sometimes, their girlfriends' faces would darken, but often they kept the same empty expression that New Yorkers carry in the street.
As I walked, I could feel my sex moisten a little bit. With each step, there was a little bit more of a glide. I wasn't aroused yet, but I had enough of a sniff of how good arousal would feel like to want to push the envelope. In a quieter side street, where the fancy stores like Channel and Gucci like to be, away from Broadway with the consumer brands like Super Dry, I stopped to pretend to be on my phone. That would allow guys to have more of a look at me, as they could see me from the distance.
A dressy guy walked up to me. He had a sports jacket with a floral print. The jacket was open to reveal a shirt of one of those summer textile textures that's so airy. The shirt was unbuttoned all the way down to below the chest to reveal a bit of bare chiseled chest. That chest was shaved smooth. His eyebrows were carefully groomed. The clothes on his body were tailored to give that dressy fresh of the runway feel. The heel of his fine leather shoes echoed against the historically preserved store facades.
From the start of the block, he had his eyes on me. They were festooned on the breasts at first. He was probably trying to make out the details, and savor the juiciness of my young flesh. Then his gaze wandered all over my body. He was probably picturing my naked on top of the sateen sheets of his SoHo loft with floor to ceiling windows -- and perhaps a view of the Hudson if it was high enough. When he got almost into talking range, his eyes fastened to my eyes. He sent me a soft smile that sent shivers up and down my spine. There was so much elegant manliness in his face. His cheekbones had a chiseled thing like from a Photoshopped magazine cover to it. He knew what he was doing. He let his gaze ooze his energy into mine. I felt like screaming: "Make me one of your girls! Take me to your fancy restaurants! I'll dress up real sexy for you to show me off!" Right as he passed me, when I could see the details of his eyes and the pores of his skin, my body felt soft like melting. He gave a little nod like he recognized me and walked on to disappear in the masses.
I felt stage 1 moisture in my sex. I also felt pounding in my heart cavity. Phew! This was doing it. I had all but forgotten about the headache right as it was fading back in. I needed more of that high. I felt hooked and at a point where I knew that I never had been able to stop until I got my release.
I knew I needed more of a surge, but I also knew that taking my top down to bare my boobs would have been too tasteless. How could I increase the intensity? How?! And then it happened by accident. I had drifted up towards Washington Square Place, the center of NYU. The streets had gotten more crowded. And after a traffic light street crossing, I had gotten stuck in a particular dense pack of humans. I had to slow my pace. And I was pushed right next to people from all sides. I was very aware of personal space and cautious about avoiding to bump into anyone or suddenly slow down to let the person behind me step on me from behind. So next to me was this Latin college kid caught in the same situation.
His eyes kept wandering to my side to steal a glimpse. He'd always follow it up by looking the other side as well to pretend like he was only scanning the area. Yet, his eyes came back, they tried to find their way through the side of the front cover of my farmer john jeans. He admired the luscious side boob, but he was hoping to steal a glance of my nipples that were pressed against the fabric. And no matter how the loose fabric moved around and how clear of a vision he got of my side boob, those damn nipples eluded him.
I could sense that he was moving as close as he could get to me. He seemed to be speeding up and slowing down just a tad to see if he could get another angle. His face was covered with summer night heat sweat pearls. And his finger-long black hair looked wet as well. I could almost get a hint of his body odor. He was so close, in such an intimate range. And he was so feverously obsessed with my body, while he was trying to pretend like he was walking straight ahead. I checked the front of his shorts. There was a bulge. We were two strangers walking the city, arousing each other. If I had allowed him to finger me, he would have happily obliged, but I was too shy for that. I got my cheap thrills by being close but no more.
